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E'W-ALD  FLflGEL. 
'  API?    1     1894 

PALO  ALTO.  CAL 


HISTORY 


hi    i  iik 


ENGLISH    LANGUAGE 


BY 


T.    R.    LOUNSBURY 

Professor  oh   English  in   Vai.e   University 


RE  r  IS  ED   A. YD   E.VLARGED   EDITION 


iNEW    YORK 

HENRY    HOLT   AND   COMPANY 

1894 


■   ■  •    . 

'.■... 


Copyright,  1879,  1894, 
By   HENRY   HOLT  &  CO. 


$■> 


IX 


ID 


\0*T5 

L3^X 


PREFACE  TO  THE  REVISED  EDITION. 


A  revised  edition  of  this  work  has  long  been  desir- 
able on  many  accounts  ;  it  has  now  become  indispen- 
sable for  reasons  purely  typographical.  The  plates 
from  which  the  previous  impressions  have  been 
printed  are  now  thoroughly  worn  out.  The  present 
seemed,  therefore,  a  fitting  time  to  subject  the  work 
to  a  complete  revision  in  the  light  of  changes  which 
experience  has  shown  to  be  advisable,  and  of  modi- 
fications and  alterations  of  statement  which  the 
advance  of  knowledge  has  rendered  necessary. 

This  revision  has  been  carried  out  on  so  extensive 
a  scale,  and  so  numerous  have  been  the  alterations, 
that,  while  the  old  lines  have  been  followed,  the  work, 
as  a  whole,  has  almost  a  right  to  be  termed  new. 
There  are  comparatively  few  paragraphs  which  have 
not  been  entirely  or  partially  rewritten.  Facts  have 
been  restated  and  passages  have  been  rearranged. 
Matter  found  in  the  previous  editions  has  been  dis- 
carded, and  new  matter,  which  seemed  more  perti- 
nent, has  been  substituted  in  its  place.     Yet,  in  spite 

iii 


2582.T7 


iv  Preface  to  the  Revised  Edition. 

of  the  large  number  of  omissions,  so  much  has  been 
added  that  the  present  edition  contains  above  one 
hundred  and  fifty  pages  more  than  those  that  have 
preceded  it.  There  are  many  other  changes  which,  it 
is  hoped,  will  conduce  to  an  easier  and  fuller  compre- 
hension of  the  subject.  Certain  points  which,  as  expe- 
rience has  proved,  were  liable  to  be  misapprehended 
or  overlooked  by  the  reader  or  student,  have  been 
brought  out  more  clearly  and  prominently.  A  system 
of  cross-references  between  the  two  parts  and  between 
the  different  sections  of  the  second  part  has  been 
carried  through  on  a  somewhat  extended  scale.  A 
large  number  of  illustrative  references  and  quotations 
have  been  added.  In  the  limited  field,  in  fact,  which 
the  work  sets  out  to  cover,  no  pains  have  been  spared 
to  make  it  as  complete  as  possible. 

The  greatest  difference,  in  any  single  case,  between 
this  and  the  previous  editions  is  in  the  treatment  of 
the  strong  verbs  in  the  second  part.  Still  the  more 
important  of  the  changes  introduced  were  introduced 
on  the  score  of  expediency.  In  this  country  Sievers's 
Angels  achsische  Grammatik,  or  the  Sievers-Cook  "  Old 
English  Grammar,"  is  the  grammar  of  our  earliest 
speech  which  is  now  in  widest  use.  It  was  therefore 
deemed  better  to  conform  the  classification  of  the 
strong  verbs  to  that  employed  in  those  works,  and  to 
bring  it  in  accord  with  them,  a  change  was  made  in 
the  number  and  arrangement  previously  adopted. 
In  addition,  the  details  belonging  to  the  different 
classes    of  strong   verbs    have    been    largely  brought 


Preface  to  the  Revised  Edition.  v 

together  in  this  edition  under  each  class,  and  not,  as 
before,  distributed  under  different  titles. 

As  regards  the  subject  of  nomenclature,  I  have  seen 
no  reason  to  alter  essentially  that  which  was  employed 
in  the  previous  editions.  On  one  point  in  particular, 
action  has  not  been  taken  unadvisedly.  I  have  exam- 
ined with  care  everything  accessible  on  the  subject, 
and,  I  think,  nearly  everything  that  has  been  published, 
and  the  more  I  have  read,  the  less  I  have  been  im- 
pressed with  the  force  of  the  arguments  against  the 
use  of  the  term  "  Anglo-Saxon."  I  have  therefore  re- 
tained it  in  this  work,  as  furnishing  what  is  all-impor- 
tant in  nomenclature,  a  term  which,  once  understood, 
can  never  be  misunderstood.  It  is  very  noticeable 
that  those  who  are  most  violently  opposed  to  its  use, 
not  unfrequently  resort  to  it  when  they  wish  to  define 
with  absolute  precision  what  they  mean  when  they 
apply  the  term  "Old  English"  to  a  particular  period 
in  the  history  of  the  language.  There  are,  indeed, 
advantages  and  disadvantages  connected  with  any 
terminology  that  may  be  adopted.  It  is  certainly  an 
argument  in  favor  of  the  designation  as  Old  English  of 
what  is  here  called  Anglo-Saxon,  that  it  makes  promi- 
nent the  continuity  of  our  speech.  It  is  an  objection 
to  it  that,  besides  the  inevitable  ambiguity  of  the  epi- 
thet '  old,'  it  suggests  wrong  ideas  as  to  the  nature  of 
that  continuity.  Still  it  would  be  folly  to  attach  impor- 
tance to  this  particular  subject.  It  is  only  those  who 
magnify  matters  of  minor  consequence  that  will  con- 
sider the  question  as  one  of  much  moment.     I  have, 


vi  Preface  to  the  Revised  Edition. 

accordingly,  taken  pains  to  furnish  the  student  with  a 
precise  account  of  that  other  one  of  the  numerous 
terminologies  proposed  or  used,  which  is  now  pre- 
ferred by  many. 

It  is  hardly  necessary  to  be  observed  that  this 
work  does  not  set  out  to  be  a  treatise  on  usage. 
Yet  it  is  inevitable  that  many  questions  connected 
with  that  subject  should  come  up  constantly  in  a 
description  of  the  history  of  inflection.  Hence  a 
place  is  necessarily  found  in  these  pages  for  the  ex- 
planation of  the  origin  of  various  and  varying  pecu- 
liarities of  expression,  as,  for  instance,  that  of  double 
plurals  of  the  nouns  like  folk  and  folks,  memorandums 
and  memoranda;  of  participial  forms  like  gotten  and 
got,  proved  and  proven;  of  phrases  and  construc- 
tions such  as  it  is  me,  you  was,  he  dare,  bctiveen  you 
and  I,  the  house  is  being  built,  and,  in  fine,  of  a  long 
list  of  locutions,  the  propriety  of  which  is  made  a 
matter  of  constant  contention. 

So  far,  in  truth,  as  regards  one  particular  branch  of 
usage,  this  work  may  be  fairly  called  complete.  There 
are  no  anomalous  grammatical  forms  belonging  to  the 
speech  which  are  not  here  recorded,  with  an  account 
given  of  their  origin.  The  exact  history  of  these  will 
answer  decisively  numerous  questions  of  disputed 
usage  which  can  be  answered  in  no  other  way.  In 
order  to  have  the  work  as  serviceable  as  possible  in 
this  particular,  the  indexes  have  been  made  exceed- 
ingly full,  wherever  points  of  this  kind  are  concerned. 

At  the  same  time,  in  tracing  the  history  of  these 


Preface  to  the  Revised  Edition.  vii 

disputed  forms  and  phrases,  I  have  not  attempted  to 
lay  down  what  in  my  opinion  ought  to  be,  but  simply 
to  point  out  what  is,  and  how  it  came  to  be  what  it  is. 
My  aim  has  been  to  furnish  a  trustworthy  guide,  to 
which  any  one  in  doubt  about  the  propriety  of  a  par- 
ticular form  can  go,  with  the  assurance  that  he  can 
find  accurate  and  definite  information  that  will  enable 
him  to  comprehend  clearly  the  arguments  for  and 
against  its  use,  and  will  put  him  in  a  position  to  settle 
for  himself  in  any  given  instance  on  which  side  the 
weight  of  authority  lies.  On  certain  points,  indeed,  the 
evidence  is  so  entirely  one-sided  that  no  course  is  open 
save  to  pronounce  an  opinion  in  accordance  with  it. 
But  this  is  rarely  the  fact.  Usually  the  evidence  is 
conflicting,  and  in  such  instances  the  most  that  can 
safely  be  said,  in  summing  up,  is  that  the  present 
tendency  of  the  language  is  to  prefer  one  of  two  dis- 
puted forms  or  expressions — which  is  something 
quite  different,  however,  from  saying  that  the  other 
form  or  expression  is  wrong.  A  scientific  treatise  has 
no  business  to  set  up  as  a  standard  of  authority  the 
preferences  of  particular  persons  :  and  in  this  matter 
diligent  effort  has  been  put  forth  to  separate  the  facts 
of  language  from  the  fancies,  the  prejudices,  and  the 
theories  of  individuals,  including  those  of  the  author 
himself. 

It  it  perhaps  desirable,  even  if  not  absolutely 
necessary,  to  repeat  the  statement  made  in  the  preface 
to  the  previous  editions,  that  the  division  of  the 
history  into  two  parts  has  involved  in  some  instances 


viii         Preface  to  the  Revised  Edition. 

the  necessity  of  going  over  the  same  ground.  In  no 
case,  however,  will  this  be  found  to  be  mere  repetition. 
And,  while  the  second  part  has  been  more  particularly 
prepared  for  the  special  student,  it  is  hoped  that  there 
is  nothing  in  it  which  will  present  any  difficulty  to  any 
reader  of  ordinary  intelligence  who  cares  to  investigate 
the  subject. 

In  conclusion,  in  expressing  my  obligations  to  many 
who  have  aided  me  in  the  revision  of  this  work,  I  am 
bound  to  acknowledge  my  special  indebtedness  to  my 
colleague,  Prof.  Albert  S.  Cook,  who  in  all  cases  of 
doubt  and  difficulty,  especially  in  connection  with  the 
earliest  period  of  the  speech,  has  invariably  given  me 
the  benefit  of  his  intimate  acquaintance  with  the  lan- 
guage of  that  time.  From  many  others,  too  numerous 
to  be  mentioned  by  name,  I  have  received  help  in  this 
revision,  either  in  the  way  of  suggestion,  or  of  criti- 
cism. There  is,  in  truth,  nothing  more  encouraging 
for  the  future  of  English  scholarship  in  this  country 
than  the  existence  of  so  many  enthusiastic  students  of 
our  early  language  and  literature,  who  are  engaged  in 
making  special  investigations  of  their  own,  and  who 
never  fail  to  communicate  to  those  under  their  instruc- 
tion a  portion  of  their  own  zeal.  I  can  ask  no  better 
fortune  for  the  revised  edition  of  this  work,  than  that 
to  some  slight  extent  it  may  In'  as  helpful  to  them  as 
the  results  of  their  labors  have  often  been  to  me. 

T.  R.  Lounshury. 
New  I  [win,  Jan.  15,  1894. 


CONTENTS. 


INTRODUCTORY    CHAPTER. 

LANGUAGES    ALLIED    TO    THE    ENGLISH. 


PAGE 


The  Indo-European  or  Aryan  Family  of  Languages. — 
I.  The  Indian  Branch.  —  II.  The  Iranian  Branch. — 
III.  The  Hellenic  Branch.—  IV.  The  Slavonic  or  Slavo- 
Lettic  Branch.  —  V.  The  Celtic  Branch. —  VI.  The 
Italic  Branch.  —  VII.  The  Teutonic  Branch. — The 
Semitic  Family I 


PART   I. 
GENERAL    HISTORY. 


CHAPTER   I. 

THE    ROMAN    AND   THE   TEUTONIC   CONQUEST   OF   BRITAIN. 

The  Roman  Conquest.  —  The  Teutonic  Conquest.  —  Names 
of  the  Teutonic  Invading  Tribes,  and  Kingdoms  founded 
by  them.  —  Rise  of  the  Kingdom  of  Wessex  .         .         •     17 

ix 


x  Contents. 

CHAPTER  II. 

THE   ANGLO-SAXON    LANGUAGE   AND    LITERATURE. 

PAGE 

Language  of  the  Teutonic  Invaders.  —  Differences  between 
Anglo-Saxon  and  Modern  English.  —  Anglo-Saxon  Lit- 
erature. —  Poetry.  —  Prose.  —  The  Anglo-Saxon  Alpha- 
bet   26 

CHAPTER   III. 

INFLUENCE   OF   FOREIGN    TONGUES   UPON   THE    ENGLISH 
OF   THE   ANGLO-SAXON    PERIOD. 

The  Celtic  Element  in  Anglo-Saxon.  —  The  Latin  Ele- 
ment.—  The  Scandinavian  Element        .         .         .         -37 

CHAPTER   IV. 

THE  NORMAN  CONQUEST  AND  THE  FRENCH  LANGUAGE 
IN  ENGLAND. 

The  Norman  French.  —  The  Norman  Conquest.  —  Effect 
of  the  Conquest  upon  the  Native  Language.  —  French 
and  English  Languages  on  English  Soil.  —  Rise  in  Im- 
portance of  the  English.  —  Loss  of  the  English  Pos- 
sessions in  France.  —  Rise  of  Mo'dern  English  Literature. 
—  Debasement  of  Anglo-Norman  French.  —  General 
Adoption  of  English  by  All  Classes        .        .         .         .48 

CHAPTER  V. 

PERIODS    IN    THE  HISTORY   OF  THE    ENGLISH    LANGUAGE, 

AM)  THE  CHANGES   WROUGHT   IN    IT   BY   THE 

NORMAN    CONQUEST. 

The  Language  before  the  Conquest.  —  The  Language  after 
the   Conquest.  —  Periods  of  the    English    Language. — 


Contents.  xi 


Literature  of  the  Old  English  Period  (i  150-1350). — 
Abandonment  of  Alliterative  Verse  for  Rhyme. — Changes 
in  Grammar  between  Anglo-Saxon  and  Middle  English. 
—  Changes  in  Vocabulary. —  Losses  of  Middle  English 
as  compared  with  Anglo-Saxon,  in  Vocabulary;  in 
Formative  Prefixes  and  Suffixes;  in  Self-explaining  Com- 
pounds. —  Gains  of  the  Language 82 


CHAPTER  VI. 

THE    THREE    DIALECTS    OF    EARLY    ENGLISH,   AND    THE 
RISE   OF   THE   MIDLAND. 

The  Three  Early  English  Dialects. — The  Northern.  — The 
Midland.  —  The  Southern.  —  Geographical  Limits  of 
these  Dialects.  —  Differences  between  the  Northern  and 
the  Southern  Dialect,  in  Spelling;  in  Grammar;  in  Vo- 
cabulary. —  Rise  of  the  Midland.  — The  Scotch  Dialect. 
—  Early  Scottish  Literature    .         .         .         .         .  .    115 


CHAPTER   VII. 

CHANGES   IN   THE   MIDDLE   ENGLISH   PERIOD 

Counteracting  Influences  Operating  upon  Language.  — 
Changes  in  the  Inflection  of  the  Noun;  of  the  Pronoun; 
of  the  Adjective;  of  the  Verb.  —  Failure  to  Produce 
Complete  Uniformity.  —  Gains  and  Losses  of  the  In- 
flection. —  Substitution  of  Natural  for  Grammatical 
Gender 140 


xii  Contents. 

CHAPTER   VIII. 

MODERN   ENGLISH    (1550-). 

PAGE 

Few  Grammatical  Changes.  —  Confusion  of  Case  in  the 
Pronoun. —  Introduction  of  its.  —  Transition  of  be  to 
the  Subjunctive.  —  Substitution  of  -s  for  -///  in  the  Third 
Person  of  the  Present  Indicative  Singular.  —  New  Pas- 
sive Formation. —  Additions  to  the  Vocabulary.  —  Set- 
tlement of  the  Orthography.  —  Wide  Extension  of 
English 161 


PART  II. 
HISTORY   OF   INFLECTIONS. 


CHAFrER    I. 

SOME   FEATURES   COMMON    TO   ALL   THE  TEUTONIC 
TONGUES. 

Case.  —  Number.  —  Declension.  — Vowel  I  >eclension  in  o; 
in  i;  in  u. —  Consonant  Declension.  — Grammatic 
( lhange. —  Vowel-Variation.  —  Vowel-<  lhange.  —  Vowel- 
Modification  .........  193 

CHAPTER   II. 

THE    NOUN. 

I.  Vowel  Declension.  — II.  Consonant  Declension.  —  Con- 
fusion of  the  Inflections.  —  Assimilation  of  the  Cases. — 
Irregular  Plurals.  —  Foreign  Plurals       .        .        .        .209 


Contents.  xiii 

CHAPTER   III. 

THE   ADJECTIVE. 

PAGE 

Indefinite  (Pronominal  or  Strong)  Declension.  —  Definite 
(Nominal  or  Weak)  Declension.  —  Loss  of  the  Adjec- 
tive Inflection.  —  Comparison.  —  Double  Comparison. 
—  Irregular  Comparison         ......  241 

CHAPTER   IV. 

THE  PRONOUN. 

The  Demonstrative  Pronouns. — The  Personal  Pronouns. — 
Loss  and  Confusion  of  Inflections. — -The  Possessive 
Pronouns.  —  His  as  Sign  of  the  Genitive.  ■ — -The  Reflex- 
ive Pronouns.  —  Pronouns  of  Address.  —  The  Interrog- 
ative Pronouns.  —  The  Relative  Pronouns.  —  The  In- 
definite Pronouns    ........  256 

CHAPTER   V. 

THE   VERB. 

The  Teutonic  Verb.  —  General  Statements.  —  Conflict  of 
the  Strong  and  Weak  Conjugations.  —  The  Strong  Con- 
jugation.—  The  Weak  Conjugation. —  Irregular  Verbs 
of  the  Weak  Conjugation  —  The  Past  Participle  of  the 
Strong  Conjugation.  —  The  Past  Participle  of  the  Weak 
Conjugation.  —  Number  and  Person.  —  Tenses  of  the 
Verb. — -The  Present  Tense,  Indicative  and  Subjunc- 
tive.—  The  Preterite  of  the  Weak  Conjugation. — The 
Preterite  of  the  Strong  Conjugation. — The  Future 
Tense.  —  Future-perfect  Tense.  —  The  Perfect  and  Plu- 


xiv  Contents. 

PAGE 

perfect. —  The  Imperative. —  The  Infinitive  Mode. — 
The  Participles.  —  Passive  Formations.  —  The  Preterite- 
present  Verbs.  —  The  Irregular  Verbs,  do,  go,  and  be       .  301 


Index  to  Subjects  and  Persons 481 

Index  to  Words  and  Phrases        .        .        .     •  .        .  488 


ENGLISH    LANGUAGE. 


INTRODUCTORY   CHAPTER. 
LANGUAGES   ALLIED   TO   THE  ENGLISH. 

The  most  superficial  student  of  speech  is  well 
acquainted  with  the  fact  that  English  is  no  isolated, 
independent  tongue,  but  one  of  the  members  of  a  vast 
family,  embracing  languages  far  removed  from  one 
another,  both  in  time  and  in  space.  This  family 
occupied,  at  an  early  period,  large  districts  of  Asia, 
and  nearly  the  whole  of  Europe;  and  during  the  last 
four  hundred  years  its  domain  has  been  extended  still 
farther,  over  a  great  portion  of  the  habitable  globe. 
Various  names  have  been  employed  to  designate  it 
as  a  whole.  Of  these  the  ones  in  most  common 
use  are  Indo-Germanic,  Indo-European,  and  Aryan, 
especially  the  last  two. 

Every  one  of  the  Indo-European  languages  is  more 
or  less  closely  related  to  every  other  by  the  fact  of 
descent  from  a  common  mother-tongue.  Of  this 
common   mother-tongue   no    literary  monuments   of 

i 


2  English  Language. 

any  sort  have  been  handed  down;  nor  is  the  place 
known  where  it  was  originally  spoken,  nor  the  time 
when.  Its  earliest  home  has,  indeed,  been  ascribed 
with  much  positiveness  to  various  regions,  both  in 
Asia  and  in  Europe.  But  for  any  such  special  assign- 
ment there  has  never  been  furnished  any  satisfactory 
proof;  hardly,  in  fact,  anything  that  can  be  deemed 
evidence. 

This  only  we  can  say,  that,  at  some  remote  periods 
of  the  past,  members  of  the  race  that  spoke  the  primi- 
tive Indo-European  speech,  or  later  descendants  of  it, 
parted  company  from  one  another,  wandered  in  vari- 
ous directions,  and  finally  formed  permanent  settle- 
ments far  apart.  Lapse  of  time  and  separation  in 
space  caused  differences  to  spring  up  between  these 
dispersed  communities, —  differences  in  customs,  in 
beliefs,  and,  what  most  concerns  us  here,  in  language. 
The  divergences  that  arose  became,  in  the  course  of 
events,  so  much  more  important  and  conspicuous  than 
the  resemblances  which  had  been  preserved,  that, 
when  the  scattered  races  and  peoples  that  had  sprung 
from  this  one  primitive  Indo-European  tribe  appear 
in  recorded  history  as  coming  into  contact  with  one 
another,  they  are  totally  unaware  of  the  tie  of  blood  or 
of  speech  that  subsists  between  them.  Nor  was  the 
fact  of  this  relationship  established  by  modern  scholars 
until  within  the  past  hundred  years. 

The  scientific  study  which  has  been  carried  on  in 
the  present  century  of  the  languages  of  the  Indo- 
European  family  shows  that  in  all  branches  of  it  there 


Languages  allied  to  tJic  English.  3 

is  a  certain  number  of  grammatical  forms  which  bear 
a  resemblance  to  each  other  so  close  that  the  conclu- 
sion is  inevitable  that  they  must  have  come  from  a 
common  source.  The  same  assertion  can  be  made  as 
to  certain  words  found  in  all  these  tongues,  especially 
personal  pronouns,  numerals,  and  nouns  denoting  the 
family  relation.  These  are  even  more  than  proofs  of 
a  common  descent.  The  common  existence  of  these 
forms  and  words  in  languages  far  apart  in  space  and 
time  makes  it  clear  that  they  must  have  belonged  to 
the  speech  of  the  primitive  Indo-European  community 
before  its  dispersion  into  separate  ones.  From  it  they 
must  have  been  transmitted  to  all  its  descendants. 
By  a  comparison  of  the  forms  and  words  thus  pre- 
served in  the  derived  languages,  it  has  been  possible 
to  construct  a  theoretical  primitive  language,  which 
is  the  remote  parent  of  every  tongue  included  in  this 
family. 

Bound  to  each  other,  therefore,  by  the  fact  of  com- 
mon descent,  all  Indo-European  tongues  necessarily 
are;  but  it  likewise  follows  that  the  relationship  ex- 
isting between  some  is  much  closer  than  that  between 
others.  According  to  the  nearness  of  this  relationship 
among  themselves,  the  languages  of  the  Indo-Euro- 
pean stock  have  been  divided  into  the  following 
distinct  branches  :  — ■ 

I.  The  Indian. — This  embraces  the  languages  of 
Northern  Hindostan.  Its  great  representative  is  the 
Sanskrit.  In  its  earliest  form  this  goes  back  to  about 
two   thousand   years  before   the    Christian  era,   and 


4  English  Language. 

about  three  centuries  before  that  epoch,  it  died  out 
as  a  spoken  tongue.  It  is  the  oldest  of  all  the 
languages  of  the  Indo-European  family,  and  as  a 
whole  comes  nearest  to  the  primitive  speech. 

II.  The  Iranian.  —  This  is  so  called  from  Iran,  the 
ancient  name  of  the  country  from  Kurdistan  to 
Afghanistan.  The  two  ancient  tongues  belonging  to 
it  are  the  Persian  of  the  cuneiform  or  arrow-headed 
inscriptions,  and  the  so-called  Zend,  the  language  of 
the  Avesta,  the  Bible  of  the  Parsis  of  Western  India. 
The  principal  existing  representative  is  the  modern 
Persian,  with  a  literature  dating  from  about  the  tenth 
century. 

III.  The  Hellenic.  —  This  is  so  called  from  the 
Hellenes,  the  inhabitants  of  Hellas,  the  names  by 
which  the  Greeks  have  always  designated  themselves 
and  their  country.  This  branch  includes  the  ancient 
Greek,  with  its  various  dialects,  the  /Eolic,  the  Doric, 
the  Ionic,  and  in  particular  the  Attic,  which  became 
at  last  the  common  language.  Its  existing  represen- 
tative is  the  Romaic  or  Modern  Greek. 

IV.  The  Slavonic,  or  Slavo-Lettic.  —This  includes 
the  languages  spoken  over  a  large  portion  of  Eastern 
Europe.  Of  this  branch  the  Russian  is  much  the 
most  important.  The  Russian  belongs  to  the  Eastern 
division,  of  which  the  most  ancient  tongue  is  the 
Bulgarian.  The  principal  languages  of  the  Western 
division  arc  the  Polish  and  the  Bohemian.  Another 
group,  called  the  Lettish  or  Lithuanic,  embracing  dia- 
lects spoken  about  the  Baltic,  is  sometimes  reckoned 
as  a  distinct  branch  of  the  Indo-European  family. 


Languages  allied  to  the  English.  5 

With  none  of  these  has  the  English  any  intimate 
relationship,  though  from  the  ancient  Greek  it  has 
borrowed  a  moderately  large  number  of  words.  With 
the  three  remaining  branches  its  connections  are 
nearer,  though  varying  in  their  nature.  With  the 
first  it  has  come  into  close  geographical  contact ;  from 
the  second  it  has  taken  full  half  of  its  literary  vocabu- 
lary; of  the  third  it  is  itself  a  member. 

V.  The  Celtic. — This  branch  was  once  widely 
spread  over  Western  Europe;  but  it  is  now  confined 
to  portions  of  the  British  Isles,  and  to  the  peninsula 
of  Brittany  in  North-western  France.  It  is  divided 
into  the  two  following  clearly  defined  groups:  — 

1st,  The  Cymric.  To  this  belong  the  languages  or 
dialects  once  used  throughout  the  whole  of  England 
and  Southern  Scotland,  but  now  limited  to  the  prin- 
cipality of  Wales,  and  represented  in  it  by  the  tongue 
we  call  the  Welsh.  There  is  one  other  living  tongue 
besides  the  Welsh.  This  is  the  Breton,  spoken  in  the 
peninsula  of  Brittany  just  mentioned,  and  sometimes 
called  Armorican  from  Armorica,  the  ancient  name 
of  that  region.  This  language  has  a  close  affinity 
with  the  third  member  of  the  group,  the  Cornish, 
once  the  speech  of  the  extreme  south-west  of  Great 
Britain,  but  which  died  out  entirely  in  the  eighteenth 
century. 

2d,  The  Gadhelic  or  Goidelic.  Of  this  group  the 
most  important  member  is  the  Erse  or  Irish,  the 
native  language  of  Ireland.  Two  other  tongues  belong 
to  it  —  the   Gaelic,  spoken   in  parts  of   the  Scottish 


6  English  Language. 

Highlands,  and  the  Manx,  spoken  by  a  portion  of  the 
population  of  the  Isle  of  Man. 

The  Celtic  tongues  are  all  dying  out,  in  some 
places  slowly,  in  others  rapidly.  In  the  British  Isles 
they  are  giving  way  to  the  encroachments  of  the 
English,  and  in  France  to  that  of  the  French.  Lin- 
guistically they  are  widely  removed  from  our  speech, 
and,  in  spite  of  their  geographical  nearness,  have  had 
no  influence  worth  speaking  of  on  its  vocabulary,  and 
none  at  all  on  its  grammar. 

VI.  The  Italic.  — The  Latin  is  the  great  represent- 
ative of  all  the  ancient  languages  included  in  this 
branch,  and  is  the  parent  of  all  the  modern  ones 
belonging  to  it.  These  latter  are  collectively  called 
Romanic  or  Romance.  They  are  descended  from  the 
Latin  spoken  by  the  common  people  {lingua  Latina 
rustica),  which  was  in  several  particulars  different 
from  the  Latin  that  has  been  handed  down  in  liter- 
ature. Between  the  two  numerous  variations  early 
existed,  and  these  continued  to  increase  during  the 
last  centuries  of  the  Roman  Empire  of  the  West. 
These  differences  were  in  pronunciation,  in  vocabu- 
lary, and  in  inflection.  As  regards  the  last,  the  six 
cases  of  the  classical  Latin  were,  in  this  tongue  of  the 
common  people,  largely  reduced  in  number.  Forms 
of  the  verbs  also  fell  away.  Finally  from  this  cor- 
rupt popular  speech  were  successively  developed 
between  the  tenth  and  thirteenth  centuries  the  five 
literary  languages  of  Western  Europe,  —  the  French 
and  the   l'rovenral,  the  Spanish  and  the  Portuguese, 


Languages  allied  to  tJw  English.  J 

and  the  Italian.  The  use  of  French  was  at  first  con- 
fined to  Northern  France;  while  Provencal,  or  the 
Languedoc,  was  the  speech  of  the  South  of  that 
country.  The  latter,  during  the  twelfth  and  thir- 
teenth centuries  especially,  flourished  as  a  language  of 
literature,  and  in  it  was  then  composed  the  poetry  of 
the  troubadours.  But  the  political  preponderance 
of  Northern  France  carried  with  it  the  supremacy 
of  the  tongue  spoken  in  it;  and  the  Provencal  sank 
from  the  position  of  a  cultivated  language  to  that  of 
a  dialect. 

In  various  parts  of  South-eastern  Europe  there  also 
survives  a  descendant  of  the  Latin,  the  most  impor- 
tant dialect  of  which  is  the  Roumanian.  This  is 
spoken  in  the  provinces  of  Wallachia  and  Moldavia, 
constituting  the  present  kingdom  of  Roumania/and 
also  in  certain  adjacent  portions  of  the  Austrian 
Empire.  The  vocabulary  of  this  tongue  has  been 
largely  affected  by  the  languages  with  which  it  has 
come  into  contact,  and  especially  has  there  been 
a  large  admixture  of  Slavonic  words.  During  the 
present  century  it  has  begun  to  attain  some  promi- 
nence as  a  language  of  literature.  Still  another 
descendant  of  the  Latin  is  a  popular  speech,  which 
may  be  roughly  described  as  used  by  scattered  com- 
munities from  Friuli  in  North-eastern  Italy  to  the 
Orisons  in  South-eastern  Switzerland.  It  is  broken 
up  into  a  number  of  dialects,  but  is  sometimes  called 
as  a  whole  the  Ladino.  To  it  is  also  given  the  name 
of  Rhseto-Romanic,  from  the  ancient  Roman  province 


8  English  Language. 

of  Rhgetia  —  a  term  which  is  often  specifically  ap- 
plied to  the  dialect  of  it  spoken  in  Switzerland. 

The  influence  of  the  Italic  branch  upon  English 
has  been  very  great  so  far  as  regards  vocabulary. 
This  is  especially  true  of  the  classical  Latin  and  of 
the  French.  Italian  and  Spanish  have  also  con- 
tributed a  limited  number  of  terms.  The  Latin  and 
Romance  elements  in  our  tongue,  owing  to  circum- 
stances connected  with  its  history,  make  up  fully 
one-half  of  the  number  of  words  used  in  literature, 
though  the  grammar  of  Knglish  has  been  but  slightly 
affected  by  any  of  the  languages  of  this  stock. 

VII.  The  Teutonic.  —  Of  this  branch,  which  is 
termed  by  some  the  Germanic,  English  may  be  justly 
called  the  most  important  member.  As  we  have  no 
remains  of  the  primitive  Indo-European,  so  we  have 
none  of  the  primitive  Teutonic  speech,  from  which 
all  the  modern  tongues  have  descended.  The  branch 
is  now  usually  divided  into  two  clashes,  the  East- 
Germanic  and  the  West-Germanic.  Proof  of  the 
closeness  of  the  relationship  existing  between  the 
members  of  the  East-Germanic  division  has  not  been 
made  out  so  clearly  as  that  which  exists  between  the 
members  of  the  West-Germanic;  but  the  classification 
now  common  will  be  followed  here,  and  in  accord- 
ance with  it  a  detailed  description  of  groups  and 
individual  languages  will  be  given. 

I.    To  the  East-Germanic  class  belong:  — 

i.  The  Gothic.  -This  was  the  tongue  spoken  by 
the    Goths  who    dwelt    in    the    Roman    province    of 


Languages  allied  to  the  English.  9 

Moesia  on  the  Lower  Danube.  Hence  it  is  some- 
times called  the  Moeso-Gothic.  It  is  the  eldest  of 
the  Teutonic  tongues  that  have  handed  down  memo- 
rials of  their  existence,  and  naturally  is  much  the  most 
ancient  in  its  forms.  It  stands,  indeed,  in  the  same 
relation  to  the  other  members  of  this  branch  that  the 
Sanskrit  does  to  all  the  members  of  the  Indo- 
European  family.  Its  principal  literary  monument 
is  only  partially  preserved.  This  was  a  translation 
of  the  Bible  made  in  the  fourth  century  into  the 
language  of  the  Goths  of  Mcesia,  by  Ulfilas,  their 
bishop.  The  speech  died  out  in  the  ninth  century, 
and  has  left  no  descendants. 

2.  The  Scandinavian,  or  Norse.  — The  oldest  rep- 
resentative of  this  group  is  the  Old  Norse,  or,  as  it  is 
sometimes  called,  the  Old  Icelandic.  To  Iceland  it 
was  carried  in  the  ninth  century  by  settlers  from 
Norway,  and  there  gave  birth  to  a  brilliant  literature. 
The  modern  Scandinavian  tongues  are  the  Icelandic, 
the  Swedish,  the  Danish,  and  the  Norwegian. 
II.  To  the  West-Germanic  class  belong :  — 
1.  The  Hfgh  German.  — This  is  so  called  because 
originally  spoken  in  Upper  or  Southern  Germany; 
though  the  modern  literary  High  German  represents 
as  well  the  tongues  spoken  in  Midland  Germany. 
The  history  of  the  dialects  belonging  to  it  is  divided 
into  three  periods.  The  first  is  that  of  the  Old  High 
German,  extending  from  the  eighth  to  the  twelfth 
century.  The  second  period  is  that  of  Middle 
High   German,   extending    from    the    twelfth  to  the 


10  English  Language. 

sixteenth  century.  Its  literature  is  very  abundant 
in  quantity,  and  rich  in  quality.  The  New  High 
German  begins  with  the  writings  of  the  reformer 
Luther,  in  the  fust  half  of  the  sixteenth  century, 
especially  with  his  translation  of  the  liible.  It  is 
the  language  of  all  modern  German  literature,  and  is 
usually  termed  by  us  simply  the  German. 

Next  follows  a  group  of  tongues,  which  as  spoken 
by  the  dwellers  of  Northern  or  Lower  Germany,  is 
commonly  called  the  Low  Germanic.  To  this  group 
belong  the  following :  — 

2.  The  Low  Frankish,  which  was  spoken  princi- 
pally in  the  Netherlands,  and  hence  during  portions 
of  its  history  has  been  called  the  Netherlandish.  It 
is  now  represented  by  the  Dutch  of  Holland,  and  the 
Flemish  spoken  in  portions  of  Belgium.  The  Flem- 
ish, as  a  literary  language,  is  essentially  a  dialect  of 
the  Dutch. 

3.  The  Old  Saxon,  which  may  roughly  be  de- 
scribed as  having  been  spoken  in  the  region  between 
the  Rhine  and  the  Elbe,  though  not  in  the  extreme 
North.  Its  principal  monument  is  a  poem  of  the 
ninth  century,  written  in  alliterative  verse,  and 
entitled  the  Heliand,  or  'Healer.'  As  regards  its 
subject,  it  is  a  life  of  Christ  based  upon  the  four 
gospels.  The  modern  representative  of  this  tongue 
is  the  Piatt  Deutsch,  sometimes  called  simply  Low 
German.  This  is  the  speech  of  the  peasantry  of 
Northern  Germany,  and  extends  with  decided  dialec- 
tic variations  from   the   Rhine  to  Lomerania.     The 


Languages  allied  to  the  English.  1 1 

predominance  of  High  German  has  prevented  any 
general  development  of  it  as  a  language  of  literature, 
but  many  works  have  been  written  in  it,  among  which 
the  poems  and  tales  of  Fritz  Reuter  (1S10-1874)  are 
especially  noteworthy. 

4.  The  Frisian,  or  Friesic,  which  was  spoken  in 
the  narrow  strip  of  coast  north  of  the  territory  occu- 
pied by  the  Old  Saxon,  and  in  the  adjacent  islands. 
It  is  now  much  more  restricted  in  space,  being 
limited  to  a  few  country  districts  on  the  mainland 
and  to  a  few  islands  along  the  coast.  Its  earliest 
monuments  are  a  collection  of  laws,  contracts,  and 
official  documents  which  go  back  no  farther  than  the 
fourteenth  or  fifteenth  centuries.  At  the  present 
time  it  exists  only  as  a  popular  speech,  though 
attempts  have  been  made  of  late  to  cultivate  it  as  a 
literary  language. 

5.  Closely  allied  to  the  Frisian  is  the  Saxon  or 
English,  which  is  the  most  important  of  the  whole 
group.  In  the  fifth  and  sixth  centuries  it  was  carried 
to  Great  Britain  by  the  Saxons  and  Angles.  There 
it  had  a  history,  and  developed  a  literature  pecul- 
iarly its  own.  The  earliest  form  of  it  is  commonly 
designated  by  modern  writers  as  Anglo-Saxon,  or  Old 
English. 

There  are  several  other  families  of  speech  found 
over  the  earth,  but  so  far  no  evidence  of  relationship 
has  been  shown  to  exist  between  any  of  them  and  the 
Indo-European.  One  of  the  most  important  of  these 
is  the  Semitic.     It  is  so  called  because  it  was  once 


12  EiiglisJi  Language. 

assumed  that  the  peoples  who  spoke  the  tongues 
belonging  to  it  were  the  descendants  of  Shem,  the 
eldest  son  of  Noah;  and  for  a  similar  reason  the  term 
Japhetic  has  occasionally  been  applied  to  the  Indo- 
European.  To  the  Semitic  family  belong  among 
others,  Assyrian,  Syrian,  Phoenician,  Hebrew,  and 
Arabic.  There  is  still  another  family  called  vari- 
ously the  Turanian,  or  the  Tartaric,  or  the  Scythian, 
which  includes  among  its  members  the  tongues 
spoken  by  the  Finns,  the  Hungarians,  and  the  Turks. 
But  though  our  speech  has  borrowed  words  from  some 
of  these  languages,  and  from  languages  belonging  to 
still  other  families,  between  it  and  any  one  of  them 
no  trace  of  the  slightest  real  connection  can  be  dis- 
covered. 

As  contrasted  with  these,  English  can  therefore  be 
spoken  of  with  sufficient  accuracy  as  a  member  of 
the  Indo-European  family  of  languages.  As  con- 
trasted with  its  numerous  related  tongues,  it  is  more 
specifically  to  be  described  as  a  member  of  the  Low 
Germanic  group  of  the  Teutonic  branch  of  that  family. 
Its  history,  like  that  of  all  other  tongues,  naturally 
divides  itself  into  two  parts.  The  first  embraces 
what,  for  lack  of  a  better  term,  may  be  called  its 
general  history;  that  is,  the  account  of  the  circum- 
stances and  conditions  under  which  it  developed  its 
present  form,  of  the  external  agencies  that  operated 
upon  it,  especially  of  the  social  and  political  influ 
ences  that  affected  it,  that  modified  it,  and  that,  in 
particular,  changed  the  character  of  its  vocabulary,  and 


Languages  allied  to  the  English.  13 

transformed  it  from  an  inflectional  speech  into  one 
nearly  non-inflectional.  The  second  is  the  history  of 
the  internal  changes  which  took  place  within  the  lan- 
guage itself.  It  is  obvious  at  a  glance  that  the  latter 
is  a  far  more  intricate  and  extensive  subject  than  the 
former.  It  embraces,  indeed,  a  vast  variety  of  sub- 
jects, the  full  consideration  of  any  one  of  which  would 
require  a  separate  volume.  This  work  will  treat  of  so 
much  only  of  this  internal  history  as  is  concerned  with 
the  variations  of  form  that  have  taken  place  in  the 
noun,  the  adjective,  the  pronoun,  and  the  verb,  caused 
by  change  or  loss  of  inflection.  Some  notice  will 
necessarily  be  taken,  in  addition,  of  the  steps  which 
the  language  has  resorted  to  in  order  to  increase  its 
resources,  and  to  repair  the  losses  it  has  sustained, 
either  by  the  development  of  forms  entirely  new,  or 
the  application  of  old  forms  to  new  uses.  This  is 
but  a  small  portion  of  the  immense  field  which  must 
be  covered  in  any  full  account  of  the  interior  growth 
and  development  of  our  speech;  but  beyond  these 
limits  there  will,  in  this  treatise,  be  no  attempt  to  go. 


Part  I. 
GENERAL    HISTORY. 


CHAPTER   I. 

THE   ROMAN   AND   THE  TEUTONIC    CONQUEST    OF 

BRITAIN. 

The  English  tongue  is  at  the  present  time  the 
speech  of  communities  scattered  over  all  the  globe; 
but  its  history  as  a  language  is  almost  wholly  confined 
to  the  island  of  Great  Britain.  There  it  was  that  the 
violent  changes  which  took  place  in  the  social  and 
political  condition  of  the  people  were  indirectly  fol- 
lowed by  as  violent  changes  in  the  character  and 
grammatical  structure  of  the  words  they  spoke. 
Without  an  adequate  knowledge  of  the  former,  no 
one  can  gain  a  satisfactory  conception  of  the  latter. 
The  Celts,  the  Romans,  the  Saxons,  the  Northmen, 
and  the  French  have  met  or  succeeded  one  another 
upon  British  soil;  and  the  occupation  of  the  country 
by  each  has  left  ineffaceable  records  of  itself  in  the 
tongue  we  use  to-day.  But  English  was  not  the 
original  speech  of  the  island.  In  the  modern  form 
in  which  we  know  it,  it  can,  indeed,  hardly  lay  claim 
to  a  higher  age  than  five  hundred  years.  It  is,  there- 
fore, quite  as  important  to  understand  clearly  what 
English  is  not,  as  well  as  what  it  is. 

17 


20  English  Language. 

inhabitants  of  the  island.  Even  if  a  few  words  thus 
derived  can  be  discovered,  there  is  not  perhaps  a 
single  one  of  them  that  has  passed  directly  from  this 
source  over  into  the  English  tongue. 

Traces  of  the  Roman  occupation  are,  indeed,  to  be 
found  in  names  of  towns.  That  the  -coin  of  Lincoln 
is  due  to  colonia  is  perhaps  doubtful ;  but  the  Latin 
castra,  '  camp,'  is  certainly  preserved  in  the  names 
of  a  large  number  of  places  ending  in  -caster, 
-cester,  and  -Chester,  as  Lancaster,  Worcester,  and 
Winchester.  Likewise  the  word  'street,'  which  is 
merely  the  first  word  of  strata  via,  '  paved  way,'  may 
have  come  to  us  in  consequence  of  the  Teutonic 
invaders  hearing  the  term  first  applied  by  the  Britons 
to  the  Roman  military  roads;  but  this  is  doubtful,  for 
the  same  term  appears  very  early  in  all  the  Teutonic 
dialects.  It  is  possible  that  one  or  two  other  words 
may  have  been  derived  in  this  way  from  this  source; 
but  it  is  evident  that  the  Latin  of  the  Roman  occupa- 
tion exercised  no  appreciable  influence  upon  the 
English  speech  properly  so  called.  Still,  as  the 
Roman  names  of  towns  have  been  retained  to  this 
day,  to  the  words  denoting  these  is  often  given  the 
title  of  "Latin  of  the  First  Period." 

The  Teutonic  Conquest.  —  Up  to  this  time,  English 
was  not  known  in  the  island.  It  was  to  the  Teutonic 
invasion,  which  followed  soon  after  the  Roman  occu- 
pation ceased,  that  we  owe  the  introduction  of  our 
language  into  Great  Britain,  and  the  gradual  dis- 
placement oi  the  Celtic  tongues. 


The   Teutonic  Conquest.  21 

The  story  of  this  Teutonic  invasion  and  conquest 
is  in  many  respects  obscure  and  uncertain;  but,  while 
numerous  details  may  be  mythical  rather  than  histori- 
cal, the  general  statement  cannot  be  far  from  the 
truth.  The  common  account  runs  somewhat  as  fol- 
lows :  Of  the  western  provinces  of  the  Roman  Empire, 
Great  Britain  was  the  last  to  be  conquered,  the  first 
to  be  abandoned.  Its  inhabitants  were  left,  in  the 
first  half  of  the  fifth  century,  exposed  to  the  attacks  of 
the  dwellers  in  the  northern  part  of  the  island,  the 
Picts  and  Scots,  who  had  never  been  really  subdued, 
and  whose  incursions  had  always  been,  from  the  time 
of  the  first  conquest,  a  source  of  annoyance  and  alarm. 
In  their  extremity  the  wretched  population  called  for 
aid  upon  certain  Teutonic  tribes  dwelling  upon  the 
north  coast  of  Germany.  It  was  by  these  the  English 
language  was  brought  into  Great  Britain;  for  the  new 
auxiliaries  did  not  long  remain  contented  with  the 
limited  territory  which  had  been  assigned  them,  but, 
soon  turning  their  arms  against  their  allies,  ended  at 
last  in  conquering  the  country  they  came  to  save. 

This  invasion  is  said  to  have  begun  about  the 
middle  of  the  fifth  century.  It  is  more  than  prob- 
able, to  be  sure,  that,  previous  to  this  time,  Teutonic 
bands  had  made  marauding  descents  upon  the  coast; 
it  is  not  impossible  that  they  had  formed  scattered 
settlements.  About  the  end  of  the  fourth  century 
one  of  the  Roman  military  officers  stationed  in  Britain 
was  styled  "Count  of  the  Saxon  Frontier"  {Coi/ics 
Limitis  Saxonici  per  Britanniam);  and  his  jurisdic- 


22  English  Language. 

tion  extended  from  the  Wash  to  Southampton.  This 
stretch  of  coast  may  have  been  called  the  Saxon 
Frontier  because  Saxons  inhabited  it:  the  more 
reasonable  assumption  is  that  it  was  so  called  because 
the  Saxons  molested  it. 

Names  of  the  Teutonic  Invading  Tribes,  and  King- 
doms founded  by  them.  —  The  Teutonic  invaders  were 
Low  Germans,  and  belonged  to  three  tribes, —  the 
Jutes,  the  Saxons,  and  the  Angles.  According  to 
the  dates  furnished  by  the  Anglo-Saxon  Chronicle, 
Hengist  and  Horsa  came  over  in  449  with  a  body 
of  Jutes,  and  subsequently  founded  the  kingdom  of 
Kent.  They  also  occupied  the  Isle  of  Wight.  In 
477  ^Ella  landed  near  the  present  city  of  Chichester, 
and  founded  the  kingdom  of  the  South  Saxons,  or 
Sussex.  This,  roughly  speaking,  includes  the  present 
counties  of  Surrey  and  Sussex.  In  495  Cerdic  came 
over,  and  in  519  founded  the  kingdom  of  the  West 
Saxons,  or  Wessex.  This  by  successive  conquests 
came  finally  to  include  nearly  all  South-west  England, 
with  a  portion  of  the  country  north  of  the  upper 
waters  of  the  Thames.  There  were  also  Saxons  north 
of  the  Thames,  occupying  the  present  counties  of 
Essex  and  Middlesex. 

Sussex,  Wessex,  and  Kssex  are  usually  spoken  of 
as  the  three  Saxon  monarchies.  There  were  likewise 
kingdoms  founded  by  the  Angles.  Their  collective 
territory  embraced  much  the  larger  part  of  Great 
Britain,  but  their  origin  is  wrapped  in  even  deeper 
obscurity    than    that   of    the    others.     The    largest   of 


The   Teutonic  Conquest.  23 

these  was  the  kingdom  of  Northumbria,  which 
extended  from  the  Humber  to  the  Forth,  and  conse- 
quently included  the  greater  portion  of  the  Scottish 
Lowlands.  We  know  nothing  of  its  early  history. 
The  establishment  of  its  monarchy  is  ascribed  to  the 
year  547,  under  which  date  the  Anglo-Saxon  Chroni- 
cle states  that  "  Ida  came  to  the  throne,  from  whom 
sprang  the  royal  race  of  the  Northumbrians."  It  was 
frequently  divided  into  the  two  kingdoms  of  Deira 
and  Bernicia.  The  former  extended  from  the  Hum- 
ber to  the  Tees,  and  was  about  the  same  as  the  present 
county  of  York.  The  latter  stretched  from  the  Tees 
to  the  Frith  of  Forth. 

Besides  Northumbria,  there  was  the  kingdom  of 
East  Anglia,  which  included  the  modern  Norfolk  and 
Suffolk  (the  Nor  tit -folk  and  the  South-folk),  and  parts 
of  other  counties.  The  last  Anglian  kingdom  to  be 
formed  was  that  of  Mercia, —  the  "March,"  or  fron- 
tier. This  in  process  of  time  came  to  be  one  of  the 
largest,  and  to  embrace  most  of  the  central  counties 
of  England.  These  seven  monarchies  are  often 
popularly  but  loosely  spoken  of  as  the  Heptarchy. 

From  the  account  just  given,  it  appears  that  the 
Teutonic  conquest  of  Great  Britain  was  chiefly  the 
work  of  two  tribes, —  the  Saxons  and  the  Angles.  It 
further  appears  that  the  former  settled  mainly  in  the 
southern  part  of  the  island;  while  the  latter  occupied 
the  centre  and  north  of  England  and  the  Lowlands  of 
Scotland.  The  Angles  had  a  marked  superiority, 
both  in  their  numbers,  and  in  the  extent  of  territory 


24  EnglisJt  Language. 


&"""'    ^"*'sm*Si 


they  occupied.  When,  therefore,  any  characteristic 
differences  that  may  have  originally  existed  between 
the  tribes  began  to  disappear,  and  the  two  peoples 
blended  in  one,  it  is  no  matter  of  wonder  that  the 
name  of  the  larger  body  should  be  taken  to  designate 
the  country  the  two  possessed  in  common.  Englisc, 
'English,'  was  the  title  usually  given,  after  the  ninth 
century,  to  the  race  and  language.  Englaland  (con- 
tracted, England),  '  land  of  the  Angles, '  came  later 
to  be  the  name  applied  to  the  whole  country  from 
the  Channel  to  the  Frith  of  Forth. 

But,  though  the  Angles  were  the  more  numerous, 
the  Saxons  seem  to  have  been  the  first  to  come  into 
contact  with  the  native  population;  for  it  was  the  title 
which  the  conquered  race  gave  to  all  the  invaders. 
Even  to  this  day,  to  the  Celtic  inhabitant  of  the 
British  Isles,  whether  Cymric  or  Cadhelic,  the  Eng- 
lishman is  not  an  Englishman,  but  a  Saxon  or 
Sassenach.  It  is  not  improbable,  therefore,  that 
this  tribe  made  the  earliest  marauding  descents  upon 
the  entire  length  of  coast.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
invaders  spoke  of  the  native  population  sometimes  as 
Britons,  sometimes  as  Welsh  (A.  S.  Welisc,  IVc/sc, 
'foreign,'  from  A.  S.  II hi///,  a  'foreigner  '). 

Rise  of  the  Kingdom  of  Wessex.  —  The  conquest 
of  the  country  was  no  rapid  or  easy  task.  The  native 
population  resisted  fiercely,  and  gave  way  slowly. 
Every  accession  of  territory  was  gained  at  the  cost 
of  hard  fighting.  Still,  under  incessant  attacks,  the 
Britons    were    steadily,   though   slowly,   pashed   back 


The   Teutonic  Conquest.  25 

towards  the  western  shore  of  the  island ;  and  at  the 
beginning  of  the  ninth  century  the  portion  of  country 
directly  under  their  sway  was  limited  to  the  present 
county  of  Cornwall  (West  Wales),  to  the  present 
principality  of  Wales  (North  Wales),  and  to  a  strip 
along  the  north-western  coast  of  England  and  south- 
western coast  of  Scotland. 

But  the  invaders  were  not  only  constantly  fighting 
the  native  Celtic  inhabitants,  they  were  as  constantly 
engaged  in  hostilities  among  themselves.  As  a  result, 
the  size  and  the  number  of  the  various  kingdoms  they 
founded  were  constantly  changing.  With  the  acces- 
sion, however,  in  802,  of  Egbert  to  the  throne  of 
Wessex,  the  kingdom  of  the  West  Saxons  became  the 
ruling  one, —  a  supremacy  which  it  never  after  lost. 
Before  the  death  of  that  monarch,  which  took  place 
in  839,  his  authority  was  acknowledged  by  all  the 
invaders  that  had  settled  in  Great  Britain,  and  was 
submitted  to  by  the  people  of  West  and  of  North 
Wales.  In  the  following  century,  during  the  reigns 
of  Edward  the  Elder  (901-925)  and  Athelstan  (925- 
940),  the  son  and  grandson  of  Alfred  the  Great  (871- 
901),  the  power  of  the  house  of  Wessex  became 
permanently  established  over  the  whole  island;  and 
the  kings  of  that  line  were  recognized  as  immediate 
lords  of  all  the  English  inhabitants,  and  as  superior 
lords  of  all  the  Celtic.  At  this  point  the  Teutonic 
conquest  of  Britain  may  be  said  to  have  been  fully 
achieved. 


CHAPTER   II. 
THE  ANGLO-SAXON  LANGUAGE  AND  LITERATURE. 

Language  of  the  Teutonic  Invaders.  —  Up  to  the 
accession  of  Egbert,  the  speech  of  the  Teutonic 
invaders  of  Britain,  while  doubtless  the  same  essen- 
tially, was  broken  up  into  a  number  of  dialects. 
None  of  these,  except,  possibly,  the  Northumbrian, 
possessed  what  we  should  term  a  literature.  The 
Latin  charters  of  the  early  kings  in  several  places 
make  distinct  mention  of  the  dialect  of  Kent;  but  in 
that  no  literary  work  of  any  extent  was  then  com- 
posed, or,  if  composed,  it  has  not  been  handed  down 
in  its  original  form.  Still  the  few  monuments  of  the 
early  speech  that  have  been  preserved  enable  us  to 
recognize,  before  the  end  of  the  eighth  century,  the 
existence  of  four  principal  dialects.  Two  of  them 
are  Anglian  —  the  Mercian  and  the  Northumbrian, 
which  were  spoken  throughout  the  region  north  of  the 
Thames  to  the  furthest  limit  of  the  Teutonic  occu- 
pation of  what  is  now  Scotland.  The  other  two, 
spoken  mainly  south  of  the  Thames,  were  the  West- 
Saxon  and  the  Kentish. 

It  is  not  likely  that  any  one  of  these  four  dialects 
jessed  originally  any  authority  outside  of  its  own 

26 


Anglo-Saxon  Languagt   and  Literature.     2J 

district.  With  the  accession,  however,  of  the  royal 
house  of  Wessex  to  the  rule  of  Teutonic  England,  this 
condition  of  things  underwent  a  change.  Linguistic 
supremacy,  other  things  being  equal,  is  sure  to  follow 
political :  the  dialect  of  Wessex,  accordingly,  became 
the  cultivated  language  of  the  whole  people, —  the 
language  in  which  books  were  written  and  laws  were 
published.  During  the  reign  of  Alfred  (871-901)  it 
began  to  develop  a  literature,  which,  before  the 
Norman  Conquest,  attained  no  slight  proportions.  It 
is  in  this  West-Saxon  dialect  that  nearly  all  the  exist- 
ing monuments  of  our  earliest  speech  were  composed, 
or,  it  would  be  more  correct  to  say,  have  been  pre- 
served. Still,  besides  these,  we  have  extant  a  few 
interlinear  glosses  —  that  is,  translations  inserted 
between  the  lines  —  written  in  the  language  of  North- 
umbria,  the  parent  tongue  of  the  present  dialects  of 
the  North  of  England  and  of  the  Scottish  Lowlands. 

The  language  of  the  Teutonic  invaders  was  origi- 
nally called  by  them  Saxon  or  English,  according  as 
they  themselves  were  Saxons  or  Angles.  It  continued, 
even  down  to  the  eleventh  century,  to  be  thus  vari- 
ously designated  in  their  own  Latin  writings.  Still 
the  superiority  of  the  Angles,  arising  from  vastly 
greater  numbers,  from  larger  territory,  and  perhaps 
from  an  earlier  cultivation  of  literature,  eventually, 
and  to  all  appearance  speedily,  made  the  name 
belonging  to  them  predominant.  It  survived  the 
decay  of  their  political  power.  Though  the  kings 
of  the  West  Saxons  attained  to  the  supremacy;  though 


2 8  English  Language. 

Winchester,  the  West-Saxon  capital,  became  the  capi- 
tal of  the  whole  country;  though  the  West-Saxon 
dialect  became  the  language  of  all  who  wrote,  the 
name  applied  both  to  the  race  and  the  tongue  was 
usually  Englisc,  that  is,  'English.'  From  the  ninth 
century  on,  it  is  the  only  term  applied  to  it  by  those 
who  wrote  in  it.  When,  in  the  sixteenth  and  seven- 
teenth centuries,  a  revival  of  the  study  of  our  early 
speech  took  place,  it  was  sometimes  called  Saxon, 
sometimes  English-Saxon,  and  sometimes  Anglo- 
Saxon.  The  last  designation,  as  recognizing  the 
names  of  the  two  principal  invading  tribes,  has  been 
until  recently  the  one  generally  adopted.  By  many 
it  is  now  styled  Old  English.  In  this  work  Anglo- 
Saxon  will  be  used  to  mark  a  period  in  the  history  of 
the  English  language  extending  from  450  to  1150,  or 
nearly  a  century  after  the  Norman  Conquest;  and, 
when  employed  without  limitation,  will  designate  that 
dialect  of  it  called  specifically  the  West-Saxon.  As 
an  equivalent  phrase,  "English  of  the  Anglo-Saxon 
period  "  will  also  be  used. 

Differences  between  Anglo-Saxon  and  Modern  Eng- 
lish.—  Both  in  grammar  and  in  vocabulary  Anglo- 
Saxon  differed  widely  from  Modern  English.  It  was 
what,  in  the  technical  language  of  grammarians,  is 
called  a  synthetic  language;  that  is,  a  language,  like 
the  Latin,  which  expresses  by  changes  in  the  form  of 
the  words  themselves,  the  modifications  of  meaning 
they  undergo,  and  their  relations  to  one  another  in 
the  sentence.     It  had  two  principal  de<  tensions  of 


Anglo-Saxon  Language  and  Literature.    29 

the  noun,  with  several  subordinate  declensions  under 
one  of  them.1  It  had  two  declensions  of  the  adjective, 
according  as  its  substantive  was  to  be  represented  as 
definite  or  indefinite.2  It  had  a  distinct  form  for  four 
cases  in  the  substantive.  It  had  two  leading  conjuga- 
tions of  the  verb,  with  subordinate  conjugations  under 
each.3  As  a  necessary  accompaniment  of  this  fulness 
of  inflection,  it  possessed  in  comparison  with  the 
present  tongue,  a  somewhat  complicated  syntax.  On 
the  other  hand,  Modern  English  is  what  is  called  an 
analytic  language.  The  relations  of  ideas  which 
were  once  expressed  by  termination  and  inflection 
are  now,  with  the  disappearance  of  these,  expressed, 
instead,  by  the  use  of  prepositions  and  their  cases, 
and  by  the  arrangement  of  words  in  the  sentence. 
Still  the  grammatical  structure,  what  there  is  left  of 
it,  is  purely  Teutonic. 

Even  more  marked  is  the  difference  between  the 
ancient  and  the  modern  tongue  in  the  vocabulary.  A 
vast  number  of  words  belonging  to  the  Anglo-Saxon 
no  longer  exist  for  us,  even  in  a  changed  form.  The 
places  of  these  have  been  supplied  by  borrowing  from 
other  languages,  especially  from  Latin  and  French. 
This  has  been  carried  on  to  an  extent  which,  if 
vocabulary  alone  were  considered,  would  make  it 
doubtful  whether  our  tongue  is  Teutonic  or  Romanic. 

Anglo-Saxon  Literature.  —  Poetry.  —  The  Teutonic 
invaders   were    originally   heathen,  and    no   written 

1  See  Part  II.  sees.  24,  25,  and  27. 
2  lb.  sees.  69-73.  3  lb.  sees.  152-156. 


30  English  Language. 

literature  existed  among  them  before  their  conversion 
to  Christianity.  'This  took  place  in  the  seventh 
century.  Of  the  dialects  of  Anglo-Saxon,  the  West- 
Saxon  is  the  only  one  that  has  handed  down  produc- 
tions of  any  literary  value,  though  many  and  perhaps 
most  of  them  were  pretty  certainly  composed  origi- 
nally in  the  Northumbrian.  They  consist  of  a 
number  of  works,  both  in  prose  and  poetry.  The 
latter,  as  in  all  early  literatures,  was  much  the  more 
important,  and  presents  a  marked  contrast,  alike  in 
character  and  construction,  to  the  verse  of  later 
times.  Its  distinguishing  peculiarity,  as  regards 
form,  was,  that  it  was  alliterative;  that  is  to  say,  it 
depended,  not  upon  final  rhyme,  nor  upon  regularity 
of  accent,  nor  upon  the  existence  of  a  fixed  number 
of  syllables  in  the  line,  but  upon  the  fact  that  a 
certain  number  of  the  more  important  words  in  the 
same  line  began  with  the  same  letter.  According  to 
the  usual,  though  not  invariable,  arrangement,  two 
principal  words  in  the  first  section  of  the  line,  and 
one  in  the  second  section,  began  with  the  same  letter, 
if  a  consonant.  If  words  beginning  with  vowels  were 
employed,  the  vowels  were  not  required  to  be  the 
same.  Unaccented  prefixes  were  not  regarded,  as 
the  ge  in  ge-wat  of  the  following  illustration  of  this 
method  of  versification:  — 

Ge-«/at  ]>a  ofer  ze/aeg-holm  ■  ze/inde  ge-fysed 
^lota/amig-heals  '/ugle  gellcost. 

//'cut  thru  nvcr  the  sea  a/ave,  wind-impelled, 
The  ioat  with  Aow  of  foam,  likest  a  /ird. 


Anglo-Saxon  Language  and  Literature.     31 

As  regards  subject,  Anglo-Saxon  poetry  was  mainly 
of  a  religious  character.  To  a  large  extent  it  con- 
sisted of  versifications  of  the  narratives  contained  in 
the  Bible,  and  of  legends  of  saints  and  martyrs.  Still 
its  most  important  work  is  the  epic  of  "Beowulf," 
which  celebrates  the  deeds  of  a  Scandinavian  hero  of 
that  name.  This  exists  in  only  a  single  imperfect 
manuscript  of  the  tenth  century;  but  the  original  com- 
position of  the  poem  is  thought  by  many  to  go  back 
to  the  period  before  the  conversion  of  the  people 
to  Christianity.  The  next  most  important  work  is 
a  version  of  some  of  the  Bible  narratives,  generally 
attributed  to  Caedmon,  a  Northumbrian  monk  who 
flourished  in  the  middle  of  the  seventh  century.  But 
if  these  were  his  composition,  they  have  not  been 
preserved  in  the  form  in  which  they  were  written;  for 
it  is  not  in  the  Northumbrian,  but  in  the  West-Saxon 
dialect  that  they  now  exist.  Another  poet  of  this 
early  period  is  Cynewulf,  who  probably  flourished 
about  the  close  of  the  eighth  century,  and  in  the  early 
part  of  the  ninth. 

The  whole  of  Anglo-Saxon  poetry  which  is  extant 
amounts  to  about  thirty  thousand  lines,  and  a  large 
proportion  of  it  has  been  preserved  in  two  volumes. 
One  of  them  is  the  Codex  Exoniensis,  or  Exeter 
Book,— a  collection  which  is  supposed  to  be  the  one 
mentioned  among  the  gifts  made  in  the  eleventh 
century  to  St.  Peter's  monastery  in  Exeter  by  Bishop 
Leofric.  It  is  there  spoken  of  as  "a  large  English 
book   of   various   matters   composed   in    song-wise " 


32  English  Language. 

{mycel  Englisc  hoc  be  gehwylcum  fringum  on  leodwlsan 
geworht).  The  other  is  the  Codex  Vercellensis, —  a 
collection  found  in  1822  at  Vercelli  in  Northern 
Italy. 

Prose.  — The  language  of  Anglo-Saxon  poetry  stands 
at  the  farthest  possible  remove  from  that  of  daily  life. 
It  constantly  repeats  the  same  ideas  in  slightly  vary- 
ing phrases;  it  uses  numerous  compound  words  pecul- 
iar to  itself;  the  construction  of  its  sentences  is 
often  involved  and  intricate,  and  the  meaning  in 
consequence  obscure;  and  through  it  all,  with  a 
certain  grandeur,  there  is  joined  a  certain  monotony 
from  the  little  range  of  thought  or  expression  found 
in  it.  On  the  other  hand,  Anglo-Saxon  prose  is  for 
the  most  part  exceedingly  simple  in  its  construction. 
It  may  be  said  to  begin  with  King  Alfred,  who  is, 
indeed,  its  most  prominent  author.  Like  the  poetry, 
its  subject-matter  is  mainly  religious,  and  to  a  large 
extent  it  is  made  up  of  translations  from  the  Latin. 
Still  two  of  its  most  important  monuments  are  purely 
original,  and  remain  of  especial  value  to  the  present 
day.  ( )ne  of  these  is  a  collection  of  the  laws  of  vari- 
ous kings.  The  other  is  a  series  of  annals  called 
the  "Anglo-Saxon  Chronicle,"  in  which  the  events 
of  each  year  arc  recorded  under  that  date.  Of  this 
work  one  manuscript  extends  down  to  the  death  of 
King  Stephen  in  1  154.  Anglo-Saxon  prose  is  of  great 
interest  from  a  linguistic  point  of  view:  as  literature, 
it  is,  in  general,  dull  beyond  description. 

The  following  specimen  of  Anglo-Saxon  prose  is 


Anglo-Saxon  Language  and  Literature.     33 

taken  from  the  account  given  to  King  Alfred  by 
Ohthere,  one  of  his  Norse  subjects,  and  inserted  by 
the  former  into  his  translation  of  the  History  of 
Paulus  Orosius,  a  Spanish  priest  of  the  fifth  century. 
In  the  interlinear  gloss  the  modern  forms  of  the 
Anglo-Saxon  words  are,  when  not  used,  placed  in 
parentheses:  and  some  of  the  words  not  found  or 
implied  in  the  Anglo-Saxon,  but  employed  in  the 
gloss,  are  placed  in  brackets. 

Ohthere  saide  his  hlaforde,  ^Elfrede  cyninge,  8set 

Ohthere  said      to  his         lord,  King  Alfred,  that 

he  ealra  NorSmonna  norftmest  bude.     He  cwseS  ftset 

he     of  all  Northmen  northmost       dwelt.        He  said  (quoth)  that 

he  bude  on  Ssem  lande  nonSvveardum  wiS   Sa  West-see. 

he     dwelt      in       the         land         northward    along  (with)    the    West-sea. 

He  siede,  freah,  Sset  Sset  land  sle  swifie  lang  nor5  Sonan  ; 

He      said,     though,  that    that     land      is      very       long    north       thence; 

ac  hit  is  eall  weste,buton  on  ■feawum  stowum  styccemeel- 

but    it    is     all    waste,  except  (but)  in        a  few  places,  [where]  here  and 

um  wiciaS  Finnas,  on  huntoSe  on  wintra,  ond  on  sumera 

there     dwell         Finns,  for  (in)  hunting      in      winter,     and     in     summer 

on    fiscafie  be  Siere  ste.    He  siude  Sset  he,  set  sumum 

for  (in)  fishing  along  (by)  that  sea.        He      said    that  he,  at  a  certain  (some) 

cirre,       wolde       fandian       hu      longe      8aat      land 

time,  wished  (would)  to  find  out  by  trial  how  long  the  land 

norSryhte  kege ;  o85e  hwaefter  eenig  monn  be  norSan 

due  north  lay;  or  whether        any  man  north  of 

flaim  westenne  bude.    pa     for      he  norSryhte  be  Stem 

the  waste        dwelt.       Then  went  (fared)  he  due  north  along  (by)  the 

lande :    let  him    ealne  weg   '5aet   weste  land   on   ftget 

land:       [he]  left  all  [the]     way        the        waste        land        on       the 

steorbord,  ond  8a  wlds*  on  Sast  bsecbord,    ]>rie  dagas. 

starboard,         and    the  wide-sea    on     the        larboard  three      days. 


34  English  Laiiguage. 

pa  waes  he  swa  feor  norcS  swa  (Sa  hwaelhuntan  firresi: 

Then  was       he       so        far        north       as       the       whale-hunters       farthes' 

faraS.       pa        for       he     faglet     norSryhte,  swa  feor 

go  (fare).     Then  went  (fared)  he  still  (then  yet)      due  north,         so        far 

swa  he  meahte  on  5sem  otSrum  ]  rim  dagum  gesiglan. 

as      he        might        in      the  second  (other)  three      days  sail. 

It  will  be  observed  that  in  the  extract  just  given 
two  letters  occur  which  are  no  longer  in  use.  Here, 
therefore,  it  will  be  desirable  to  give  a  brief  account 
of  the  relation  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  to  the  Modern 
English  alphabet.  The  characters  used  by  the  Teu- 
tonic tribes,  when  they  first  came  over,  were  Runes. 
After  their  conversion  to  Christianity,  they  abandoned 
these  for  the  Roman  alphabet,  as  its  letters  had  been 
modified  by  the  Britons.  To  this  alphabet  they  added 
two  Runes.  One  of  them  was  v,  which  hardly  lasted 
beyond  the  Anglo-Saxon  period.  Its  place  was  early 
taken  by  the  doubled  //,  and  these  two  united  form 
the  letter  w.  The  other  Runic  letter  was  |>.  This 
probably  indicated  the  two  sounds  of  th  seen  in  thin 
and  then,  breath  and  breathe.  There  was  another 
letter  also,  which  in  its  origin  is  nothing  but  a  crossed 
d,  and  is  represented  by  the  form  <N.  In  its  use,  it 
seems  to  be  a  variant  of  )>,  and  indicated  the  same 
sounds. 

Both  of  these  characters  are  represented  in  Modern 
English  by  the  digraph  th.  They  went  largely  out  of 
use  in  the  fifteenth  century,  and  after  the  introduction 
of  printing  were  universally  abandoned.  But  the 
close  resemblance  in  writing  of  A  the  so-called  thorn- 


Anglo  Saxon  Language  and  Literature.     35 

letter,  to  >'  renders  it  frequently  difficult  to  distinguish 
the  one  from  the  other  in  the  manuscripts.  Later  the 
two  came  to  be  practically  similar,  and  not  only  in 
early  writing  but  in  early  printing  the,  that,  and  a  few 
other  words  appeared  in  the  form  of  abbreviations 
ye,  y',  and  the  like.  In  ye,  which  in  the  sense  of  'the' 
is  still  occasionally  found  in  imitations  or  supposed 
imitations  of  the  archaic  style,  the  y  really  represents 
the  Anglo-Saxon  Rune  \,  and  is  properly  pronounced 

as  th. 

As  compared  with   the  present  English  alphabet, 
the  Anglo-Saxon  presents   certain   other   variations. 
There  is  no  distinct  form  for /from  i  ;  and  though  k, 
q,  and  z  occur  at  times  in  the  manuscripts,  they  did 
not  represent  sounds  then,  any  more  than  now,  which 
were  not  already  represented  by  other  letters,  or  by 
combinations  of  letters.     The  use  of  k  for  c  became 
much  more  common  after   the   Conquest.     Another 
character,  3,    in  common  use   during  the   Old  and 
Middle  English  periods,  was,  in  its  origin,  the  Roman 
g  as  modified  by  the  British  scribes.     It  represents 
the  modern  y  or  g  at  the  beginning  of  a  word,  and 
gh  at  the   end,  as  j><»,   'ye,' 3eve,   'give,'  and    inoi/j, 
'enough.'     This  character  disappeared  also  after  the 
introduction  of  printing.      During   the   middle  ages 
the  letters  of  the  Roman  alphabet  were  changed  into 
a  variety  of  forms  by  the  ingenuity  of  the  monastic 
scribes;  and  the  peculiar  modification  of  this  alpha- 
bet used  in  England  is  called  black-letter.      During 
the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries  books  were  reg- 


36  English  Language. 

ularly  printed  in  black-letter;  but,  in  the  first  half 
of  the  seventeenth  century,  it  was  generally  given 
up  for  the  clearer,  original  Roman  characters  from 
which  it  had  been  taken. 


CHAPTER   III. 

INFLUENCE     OF     FOREIGN    TONGUES     UPON    THE 
ENGLISH   OF  THE   ANGLO-SAXON   PERIOD. 

Down  to  the  time  of  the  Norman  Conquest  the 
Anglo-Saxon  form  of  the  English  language  remained 
essentially  the  same.  The  grammatical  modifications, 
in  particular,  that  it  underwent,  were  comparatively 
few  in  number,  and  slight  in  importance.  Some 
inflections  were  lost.  Cases  of  nouns,  adjectives, 
and  pronouns,  which  originally  possessed  different 
endings,  came  to  have  the  same.  The  tendency  of 
verbs  of  the  strong  conjugation  to  pass  over  to  the 
weak1  began  even  thus  early  to  show  itself.  Still 
none  of  these  changes  were  violent  or  extensive :  all 
of  them  took  place  in  accordance  with  the  natural 
law  of  development.  But  during  this  period  the  lan- 
guage came  into  contact  with  three  other  tongues, 
which  to  some  extent  affected  the  vocabulary,  and 
perhaps,  also,  the  form  of  expression.  These  were, 
first,  the  speech  of  the  native  Celtic  inhabitants; 
secondly,   the   Latin;    and,   thirdly,   the   Norse.     Of 

i  See  pages  153,  154. 
37 


o  rework 


38  English  Language. 

these,  Latin  was  the  only  one  which  at  that  time 
added  any  appreciable  number  of  words  to  the  lan- 
guage of  literature.  Terms  from  the  Celtic  or  the 
Norse  may  have  been  adopted  into  the  colloquial 
speech;  but  it  was  not  until  the  break-up  of  the 
classic  Anglo-Saxon,  which  followed  the  Norman 
Conquest,  that  they  occur  to  any  extent  in  writing. 

Celtic.  —  The  native  inhabitants  found  by  the  Teu- 
tonic invaders  in  the  part  of  Britain  they  overran 
belonged  to  the  Cymric  branch  of  the  Celtic  stock. 
As  the  conquest  was  the  work  of  several  hundred  years, 
it  might  be  supposed  that  the  vocabulary  of  each 
people  would  have  received  large  accessions  from  that 
of  the  other.  Such,  however,  was  not  the  case. 
Very  few  Celtic  terms  are  found  in  Anglo-Saxon  lit- 
erature; and  not  many,  indeed,  appear  to  have  made 
their  way  into  written  English  in  the  centuries  imme- 
diately following  the  coming  of  the  Norman-French. 
This  was  largely  due  to  the  little  intercourse  that  pre- 
vailed between  the  two  races  and  the  feelings  of  hatred 
developed  by  long  years  of  war.  The  fact  that  the 
native  inhabitants  were  Christians,  and  the  invaders 
heathen,  tended  also  to  widen  the  breach  between 
them;  but,  even  after  the  conversion  of  the  Anglo- 
Saxons,  religious  differences  came  in  to  impart  addi- 
tional bitterness  to  the  hostility  that  sprang  from 
political  and  military  conflicts.  Bede,  writing  in  the 
earlier  half  of  the  eighth  century,  says,  that  in  his  day 
it  was  not  the  custom  of  the  Britons  to  pay  any  respect 
to  the  faith  and  religion  of  the  English,  or  to  corre- 


Celtic  Element  in  English.  39 

spond  with  them  any  more  than  with  pagans.  In 
consequence,  very  few  of  the  Celtic  words  in  our 
speech  go  back  to  a  very  early  date.  Certainly  the 
modern  importations  from  that  quarter  far  exceed  in 
number  the  earlier  ones.  Moreover,  they  have  gen- 
erally come  to  us  from  the  Gadhelic  branch,  and  not 
from  the  Cymric 1 :  and  in  most  cases  they  denote 
objects  peculiar,  or  originally  peculiar,  to  the  race  by 
which  they  were  first  employed.  The  words  bard, 
brogue,  'shoe,'  claymore,  druid,  plaid,  shamrock, 
whiskey,  for  illustration,  are  all  of  Celtic  origin;  but 
none  of  them  existed  in  the  English  of  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  period,  and  most  of  them  are  of  comparatively 
recent  introduction. 

It  is  natural  that  Celtic  names  of  places  should 
be  much  more  common,  and  of  these  many  continue 
to  exist  in  the  speech  of  to-day.  The  Celtic  avon, 
meaning  'river,'  and  esk,  meaning 'water, '  are  still 
found  as  the  appellation  of  several  streams  of  Great 
Britain.  The  Cymric  pen  and  the  Gadhelic  ben,  both 
meaning  'head,'  and  hence  a  'peak,'  occur  with  a 
good  deal  of  frequency  as  part  of  the  names  of  moun- 
tains. Numerous  other  Celtic  words  can  be  detected 
in  place-names,  such,  for  instance,  as  strath,  'a  broad 
valley,'  in  Strathclyde,  tre,  'a  village,'  in  Tredegar, 
and  probably  tin,  'a  deep  pool,'  in  Lincoln.  Names 
of  persons  are,  as  might  be  expected,  even  more  nu- 
merous than  names  of  places.  There  is  an  old  English 
saying  which  runs  as  follows :  — 

1  See  page  5. 


4<D  English  Language. 

By  Tre,  Ros,1  Pol,2  Lan,8  Caer,4  and  l'en 
You  know  the  most  of  Cornish  men. 

These  prefixes  and  several  others  are  still  numerous 
in  proper  names. 

It  is  to  be  added,  that  the  influence  of  Celtic  upon 
English  has  never  been  made  until  lately  the  subject 
of  scientific  investigation;  and  even  now  the  work  of 
determining  the  degree  to  which  it  has  affected  the 
vocabulary  is  far  from  having  been  completed.      Ex- 
travagant claims  have  been  and  are  still  put  forth  as 
to  the  extent  of  this  element  in  our  tongue.     In  par- 
ticular, long  lists  of   English  words  have  been  often 
given  as  derived  from  Celtic  ones  more  or  less  resem- 
bling them.     These  lists  are,  as  a  general  rule,  utterly 
untrustworthy.     In  many  instances  there  is  no  relation- 
ship whatever  between  the  words  compared;  in  other 
instances  the  relationship  is  due  to  the  fact  that  the 
same  word  has  come  down  from  the  primitive  Indo- 
European  to  both  the  Celtic  and  Teutonic  branches; 
and  in  other  instances  still,  where  there  has  been  act- 
ual borrowing,  it  is  the  Celtic  tongues  that  have  bor- 
rowed from  the   English,  and  not  the   English  from 
the  Celtic.     At  best,  the  influence  of  the  languages 
of  this  stock  upon  our  speech  has  been  slight. 

Latin.  —  Far  greater,  even  as  regards  Anglo-Saxon, 
was  the  influence  of  the  Latin.  This  first  manifested 
itself  in  the  seventh  century,  and  was  due,  like  most 

i  Cymri  i  mooi  ;  Ga  i  headland. 

,,,.,,  ih,  pi  :;  All  enclosure,  church. 

*  A  cairn;  or  from  Lat.  castra,  a  camp. 


Latin  Element  in  Anglo-Saxon.  41 

other  changes  in  the  vocabulary,  to  the  operation  of 
causes  not  in  themselves  of  a  linguistic  nature.  In 
the  year  597  a  band  of  Roman  missionaries,  sent  by 
Pope  Gregory  I.,  came,  under  the  leadership  of 
Augustine,  to  the  kingdom  of  Kent,  with  the  object 
of  converting  the  people.  Their  efforts  were  suc- 
cessful ;  and  by  the  end  of  the  following  century  all 
of  the  Teutonic  inhabitants  of  Britain  had  gone  over 
from  heathenism  to  the  Christian  faith.  One  imme- 
diate consequence  was  to  bring  into  prominence  and 
power  in  the  country  a  body  of  ecclesiastics  who  not 
only  carried  on  the  church-service  in  Latin,  but 
were  in  the  habit  of  using  that  language  largely  in 
conversation  and  in  writing.  For  the  first  time  in 
its  history,  Teutonic  Britain  was  brought  into  con- 
tact with  the  superior  literature  and  civilization  of 
the  Continent.  The  inevitable  result  was  to  intro- 
duce into  the  Anglo-Saxon  a  number  of  words  taken 
from  the  Latin.  At  first  these  were  naturally  con- 
nected with  the  church-service,  or  with  ecclesiastical 
proceedings;  but,  as  time  went  on,  a  variety  of  terms 
came  in,  denoting  objects  in  no  way  connected  with 
religion. 

As  the  influence  of  Celtic  in  this  early  period  has 
been  overrated  by  many,  that  of  Latin  has  been 
underrated  by  most.  The  words  borrowed  from  it 
were  not  only  considerable  in  number,  they  were,  to 
a  great  extent,  thoroughly  assimilated.  This  is  made 
manifest  by  the  following  facts.  First,  from  the 
Latin  nouns  introduced,  new  adjectives  and  verbs  and 


42  English  Language. 

adverbs  were  formed  by  the  addition  of  Teutonic  end- 
ings; as  from  plante,  '  plant  '  (  Lat.  plan  fa),  was 
formed  the  verb  plantian,  'to  plant';  from  regal, 
'rule  '  (from  Lat.  regula),  were  formed  the  adjective 
regollic,  'rule-like,'  'regular, '  and  the  adverb  regollice, 
'regularly.'  Secondly,  the  new  words  were  used  with 
perfect  freedom  to  form  compounds  with  the  native 
ones;  as,  for  instance,  biscop,  'bishop'  (Lat.  episco- 
pal), enters  into  composition  with  nearly  a  dozen 
Anglo-Saxon  nouns,  of  which  list  biscop- rice,  'bishop- 
ric, '  —  the  only  one  which  has  come  down  to  the 
modern  tongue, —  will  serve  as  an  illustration. 

In  truth,  the  results  that  take  place  now  when 
words  from  one  tongue  are  brought  in  large  numbers 
into  another  can  be  found  exemplified  in  the  influ- 
ence of  Latin  upon  the  English  of  this  early  period. 
Some  of  the  native  words  began  to  disappear  entirely. 
Thus,  fe/or,  'fever'  (from  LdX.febris),  drove  out  hride, 
the  original  word  denoting  that  disease.  Again, 
the  borrowed  and  the  native  words  would  frequently 
stand  side  by  side.  Thus,  in  King  Alfred's  writings, 
as  well  as  later  ones,  munt,  'mount'  (from  Lat.  mans, 
mont-is),  is  used  interchangeably  with  dun,  the  pres- 
ent 'down,'  and  beorg,  seen  in  our  'iceberg.'  Before 
the  Norman  Conquest  six  hundred  words  at  least  had 
been  introduced  from  Latin  into  the  Anglo-Saxon. 
S  une  of  them  occur  but  once  or  twice  in  the  litera- 
ture handed  down,  others  are  met  with  frequentlv. 
\Vere  we  to  include  in  this  list  of  burrowed  terms  the 
compounds  into  which  the  borrowed  terms  inter,  the 


Scandinavian  Element  in  English.        43 

whole  number  would  be  swelled  to  three  or  four  times 
that  above  given.  It  is  also  to  be  marked,  that  not 
only  were  nouns  directly  borrowed,  but  also  adjec- 
tives and  verbs,  though  to  a  far  less  extent.  The 
words  that  came  into  Anglo-Saxon  from  the  seventh 
century  on  constitute  the  first  real  introduction  of  the 
Latin  element  into  our  tongue;  but,  in  accordance 
with  the  terminology  generally  adopted,  it  is  styled 
"  Latin  of  the  Second  Period." 

Scandinavian.  — The  extent  of  this  Latin  influence 
upon  Anglo-Saxon  is  something  that  is  capable  of 
pretty  definite  determination ;  but  such  is  not  the 
case  with  the  Scandinavian  element  that  comes  now 
to  be  considered.  The  descendants  of  the  Teutonic 
invaders,  not  much  more  than  a  century  after  their 
conversion  to  Christianity,  were  to  suffer  the  same 
evils  that  had  been  inflicted  by  their  own  heathen 
free-booting  forefathers  upon  the  original  Celtic 
population.  Under  the  year  787  the  Anglo-Saxon 
Chronicle  states,  that  in  the  days  of  Bertric,  King  of 
Wessex,  three  shiploads  of  Northmen  landed  upon 
the  coast  of  Britain,  and  slew  the  officers  who  went 
out  to  meet  them  with  the  intent  of  taking  them 
prisoners.  "These,"  it  continues,  "were  the  first 
ships  of  Danish  men  who  sought  the  land  of  the  Eng- 
lish race."  This  event  marks  the  beginning  of  a 
steadily  increasing  series  of  marauding  descents  upon 
the  seaboard,  and  inroads  into  the  interior.  These 
culminated,  in  the  latter  part  of  the  ninth  century,  in 
the  devastation  or  subjection  of  nearly  all  the  Anglo- 


44  English  Language. 

Saxon  territory,  and  the  permanent  settlement  of  a 
large  part  of  it.  East  Anglia  was  conquered  in  870, 
and  became  and  thenceforward  remained  a  Danish 
kingdom.  The  invaders  also  overran  or  subdued  the 
greater  portion  of  what  is  now  Northern  and  Eastern 
England.  Their  attempts  upon  Wessex,  however, 
were  checked  effectually  at  last  by  the  defeat  they  re- 
ceived in  878  from  King  Alfred  at  a  place  designated 
in  the  Chronicle  as  Ethandun,  which  is  generally 
considered  to  be  Edington  in  Wiltshire.  This  was 
followed  by  the  Peace  of  Wedmore.  According  to 
the  terms  of  this  treaty,  the  whole  country  was  divided 
between  the  two  nations;  the  Danes  on  their  part 
agreeing  to  adopt  the  Christian  faith. 

Even  after  this,  incursions  did  not  cease  to  be 
made,  though  they  were  on  a  comparatively  small 
scale.  Frequent  wars  went  on,  however,  between 
the  English  and  the  Danes  settled  in  England. 
Finally,  toward  the  close  of  the  tenth  century  the 
invasion  was  renewed  on  a  grander  scale.  It  ended 
in  establishing  upon  the  English  throne,  from  1013  to 
1042,  a  Danish  dynasty,  to  which  belonged  Sweyn, 
Canute,  Harold  Harefoot,  and  Hardicanute.  But  in 
every  case  the  newcomers  seem  to  have  made  no 
effort  to  keep  up  their  own  tongue,  but  adopted  the 
speech  of  the  people  among  whom  they  had  fixed 
their  homes.  The  Scandinavian  settlements  are,  for 
the  most  part,  limited  to  East  Anglia  ( Norfolk  and 
Suffolk),  to  Lincolnshire  and  the  neighboring  coun 
ties  on  the  west,  to  Yorkshire,  Lancashire,  Westmore- 


Scandinavian  Element  in  English.        45 

land,  and  Cumberland.  Their  existence  is  generally 
conceded  to  be  indicated  by  various  names  of  towns. 
Among  the  more  common  of  these  are  those  ending 
in  -by  (Old  Norse  byr,  a 'dwelling, '  'village'),  in 
-thorp  or  -torp  (O.  N.  foorp,  a  'hamlet,'  'village'), 
in  -toft  (O.  N.  toft,  'a  homestead,'  'enclosure'),  and 
in  -thwaite  (O.N.  f>veiti,  a  'clearing').  Examples 
can  be  seen  in  Whitby,  Althorp,  Lowestoft,  and 
Braithwaite. 

There  was,  accordingly,  no  slight  infusion  of  the 
Scandinavian  element  in  the  population  that  inhabited 
Britain.  But  the  extent  of  Scandinavian  influence 
upon  the  language  is  difficult  to  ascertain.  This  is 
due  to  the  fact  that  the  Old  Norse  and  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  are  both  Teutonic  tongues.  As  they  both  de- 
scended from  a  common  ancestor,  it  was  natural  that 
a  large  number  of  words  should  be  the  same,  or 
nearly  the  same,  in  both.  Furthermore,  it  is  not 
conceivable  that  all  the  vocabulary  possessed  by  either 
has  been  handed  down  in  the  literature  of  each  that 
has  been  saved.  When,  therefore,  a  word  occurs  in 
Modern  English  which  is  not  found  in  Anglo-Saxon, 
or  any  other  Low  German  tongue,  but  is  found  in  Old 
Norse,  we  can  say  that  there  is  every  probability  that 
it  came  from  the  latter.  Still  we  cannot  say  this  with 
certainty,  for  it  may  have  existed  in  the  former,  and 
not  have  been  preserved. 

There  is,  moreover,  a  special  difficulty  in  this  ques- 
tion, from  the  fact  that  it  was  in  the  Anglian  king- 
doms that  these  foreign  settlements  were  made.     But 


4.6  English  Language. 

the  existing  remains  of  Northumbrian  speech,  which 
is  an  Anglian  dialect  of  the  Anglo-Saxon,  show 
plainly  that  this  dialect  was  much  more  closely  allied 
to  the  Old  Norse  than  is  the  West-Saxon,  which  is  a 
Saxon  dialect  of  Anglo-Saxon.  In  the  last-named 
the  infinitive  of  the  verb,  for  illustration,  regularly 
ends  in  -an.  In  the  other  two  the  -//  is  dropped.  In 
West-Saxon  "to  tell'  is  tettan ;  in  Northumbrian  it  is 
tella :  in  Norse  it  is  telia.  It  is,  therefore,  quite 
conceivable,  though  it  may  not  be  very  probable,  that 
words  and  forms  which  we  ascribe  to  the  Scandina- 
vian element  may,  in  fact,  have  not  come  from  it,  but 
from  the  speech  of  the  Anglian  population;  for  we 
have  no  such  extensive  vocabulary  of  the  Northum- 
brian dialect  as  we  have  of  the  West-Saxon. 

Still  there  is  no  doubt  that  a  large  number  of  Norse 
words  were  introduced  at  this  time  into  the  spoken 
tongue.  Many  of  these  have  spread  beyond  their 
original  limits,  and  linger  to  this  day  in  the  local 
dialects  of  Northern  England  and  Southern  Scotland. 
In  these  dialects,  indeed,  this  foreign  element  is  far 
more  conspicuous  than  in  the  language  of  literature. 
Still,  in  regard  to  the  latter  also,  it  is  reasonable  to 
suppose  that  both  Norse  words,  and  Norse  meanings 
of  words,  in  many  cases,  have  supplanted  those, 
which,  up  to  the  time  of  its  introduction,  had  been 
the  prevailing  or  exclusive  ones  in  Anglo-Saxon. 
For  illustration,  sindon  was  the  ordinary  form  for 
the  plural  of  the  present  tense  of  the  verb  be:  its 
place  is  now  supplied  by  are,  the  original   of  which 


Scandinavian  Element  in  English.         47 

is  rare  in  Anglo-Saxon,  but  the  regular  form  in  the 
Norse.  So  from  the  Norse  kalla  we  seem  to  get 
our  verb  call;  for  in  Anglo-Saxon  the  corresponding 
word  is  clipian,  'to  clepe.'  Again,  the  word  dream 
is  common  to  both  tongues;  but  in  Anglo-Saxon  it 
means  'joy,'  'music';  and  it  is  from  the  Norse  that 
we  have  taken  the  modern  signification.  Still  it  was 
not  till  the  break-up  of  the  native  speech,  that  fol- 
lowed upon  the  Norman  Conquest,  that  Norse  words 
came  to  be  used  to  any  extent  in  the  language  of  lit- 
erature. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

THE  NORMAN  CONQUEST  AND  THE  FRENCH 
LANGUAGE  IN  ENGLAND. 

Up  to  the  middle  of  the  eleventh  century  the  influ- 
ences that  had  been  at  work  upon  the  language  had 
not  been  productive  of  great  changes ;  still  less  were 
they  revolutionary  in  their  nature.  The  Norsemen  for 
a  time  brought  ruin  everywhere ;  but  whether  they 
desolated  temporarily,  or  settled  permanently,  they 
did  not  anywhere  materially  disturb  the  native  speech 
as  an  instrument  of  communication,  or  affect  in  the 
slightest  its  literary  supremacy.  Even  during  the  time 
their  kings  ruled  the  country,  they  seem  not  to  have 
made  any  effort  to  introduce  into  it  the  use  of  their  own 
tongue.  But  a  series  of  events  was  now  to  take  place 
which  completely  changed  the  future  political  history 
of  the  English  people  ;  and  it  was  attended  by  as  pro- 
found and  wide-reaching  a  change  in  the  character  of 
English  speech.  In  the  latter  half  of  the  eleventh 
century  came  the  Norman  Conquest  and  the  introduc- 
tion into  the  island  of  the  French  as  the  language  of 
the  higher  classes. 

The  most  powerful  effects  upon  the  native  tongue 

48 


The  Norman-French.  49 

produced  by  these  two  agencies  did  not  fully  show 
themselves  until  three  centuries  had  passed ;  but 
a  very  early  and  almost  immediate  effect  wrought 
upon  it  was  to  throw  it  into  a  state  of  confusion.  The 
English  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  period  sank  at  once  from 
its  position  as  the  language  of  culture,  whatever  that 
culture  was.  When,  in  the  fourteenth  century,  it  once 
more  reappears  as  the  language  of  a  classic  literature, 
it  is  a  language  and  literature  widely  different  from 
that  which  had  been  supplanted  or  degraded  by  the 
coming  of  a  stranger  race.  From  the  Norman  Conquest 
on,  the  native  speech  no  longer  followed  the  natural 
law  of  development  which  it  would  have  followed  as  a 
pure  Teutonic  tongue.  To  explain  the  nature  of  the 
changes  that  were  wrought  in  it,  it  will  be  necessary  to 
give  some  account  of  the  men  whose  coming  caused 
them,  and  of  the  relations  which  for  a  long  time  existed 
on  English  soil  between  the  French  and  English 
languages. 

The  Norman-French.  —  Toward  the  close  of  the 
ninth  century  a  band  of  Northmen,  under  a  renowned 
leader  named  Rolf,  or  Rollo,  sailed  up  the  Seine,  cap- 
tured Rouen,  and,  from  that  point  as  a  centre,  carried 
on  a  continuous  and  destructive  war  with  the  native 
inhabitants.  At  last,  in  912,  peace  was  made.  To  the 
invaders,  Charles  the  Simple,  the  king  of  the  French, 
ceded  a  large  territory  bordering  upon  the  British 
Channel,  which  was  called  from  them  Normandy.  On 
the  other  hand,  Rollo  agreed  to  become  the  feudal 
vassal  of  the  French    monarch,  and  to  embrace  the 


50  English  Language. 

Christian  religion.  These  conditions  were  fully  carried 
into  effect.  The  Norsemen,  in  consequence,  became 
the  undisturbed  owners  of  the  district  given  up  to 
them,  and,  along  with  the  religion  of  their  subjects, 
they  also  adopted  their  language. 

The  Norman  Conquest.  —  The  relations  between  the 
English  and  the  Norman-French  courts  began  to 
assume  about  the  beginning  of  the  eleventh  century  a 
somewhat  close  character  by  the  marriage,  in  1002,  of 
the  Anglo-Saxon  king,  Ethelred  II.,  to  Emma,  sister 
of  Richard  III.,  the  fifth  duke  of  Normandy.  One  of 
the  children  of  this  union  was  a  son,  Edward,  who  is 
usually  styled  the  Confessor.  He  reigned  over  Eng- 
land from  1043  to  1066.  But  the  early  years  of  this 
prince  were  spent  at  the  court  of  his  uncles  Richard 
and  Robert,  dukes  of  Normandy  ;  and  when,  after  the 
termination  of  the  Danish  dynasty  in  1042,  he  was 
recalled  to  his  native  country,  and  placed  upon  the 
throne,  he  continued  to  retain  a  preference  for  the 
friends  and  the  tastes  of  his  youth.  Norman-French 
noblemen  were  assigned  positions  of  responsibility  and 
power;  Norman-French  priests  were  made  English 
bishops.  It  is  true,  a  revolution  in  1052  drove  out 
most  of  the  foreign  favorites ;  but  the  foreign  influ- 
ence could  not  have  passed  away  utterly.  Early  in 
1066  Edward  the  Confessor  died  ;  and  Harold,  the 
most  powerful  nobleman  in  the  kingdom,  was  chosen 
king  in  his  stead.  A  claim  to  the  throne  was  immedi- 
ately made,  however,  by  William,  Duke  of  Normandy, 
a  cousin  of  the  deceased  monarch.     To  support  it,  he 


The  Norman  Conquest.  5  l 

invaded  England  in  the  autumn  of  the  same  year ; 
and  the  battle  of  Hastings,  fought  on  the  14th  of 
October,  1066,  resulted  in  the  defeat  and  death  of 
Harold  and  the  subjection  of  the  whole  country. 

Effect  of  the  Conquest  upon  the  Native  Language. — 
Two  general  facts  in  regard  to  language  become  ap- 
parent as  the  effect  of  the  Conquest.  One  is,  that, 
though  the  native  tongue  continued  to  be  spoken  by 
the  great  majority  of  the  population,  it  went  out  of 
use  as  the  language  of  high  culture.  It  was  no  longer 
taught  in  the  schools.  It  was  no  longer  employed  at 
the  court  of  the  king,  or  the  castles  of  the  nobles.  It 
was  no  longer  used  in  judicial  proceedings  ;  to  some 
extent  even  it  ceased  to  be  recognized  in  the  services 
of  the  church.  This  displacement  was  probably  slow 
at  first ;  but  it  was  done  effectually  at  last.  The  second 
fact  is,  that,  after  the  Conquest,  the  educated  classes, 
whether  lay  or  ecclesiastical,  preferred  to  write  either 
in  Latin  or  in  French ;  the  latter  steadily  tending  to 
become  more  and  more  the  language  of  literature  as 
well  as  of  polite  society.  We  have,  in  consequence, 
the  singular  spectacle  of  two  tongues  flourishing  side 
by  side  in  the  same  country,  and  yet  for  centuries  so 
utterly  distinct  and  independent,  that  neither  can  be 
said  to  have  exerted  much  direct  appreciable  influence 
upon  the  other,  though  in  each  case  the  indirect  in- 
fluence was  great. 

To  understand  the  relations  between  these  two 
tongues  involves  an  acquaintance  with  the  relations 
existing  between  the  two  races  that  spoke  them  ;  and 


52  Engl  is  Ji  Language. 

in  both  cases  the  knowledge  we  have,  especially  of  the 
earlier  period,  is  obscure.  Our  information,  indeed, 
in  regard  to  our  speech,  is  based  almost  exclusively 
upon  incidental  notices  contained  in  the  Latin 
chronicles  written  in  the  twelfth  century  and  in  the 
beginning  of  the  thirteenth.  In  these  the  subject  of 
language  is  rarely  treated  of  specifically,  and  never 
at  any  length.  Accordingly,  the  inferences  that  are 
drawn  can  be  looked  upon  only  as  probable,  and  not 
as  certain.  From  the  latter  part  of  the  thirteenth  cen- 
tury on,  the  native  tongue  is  more  an  object  of  con- 
sideration in  itself,  and  our  knowledge  of  the  relations 
between  French  and  English  becomes  much  more 
positive  and  precise.  A  few  of  the  more  important 
statements  will  be  quoted ;  but  in  every  case  it  is 
necessary  to  bear  in  mind,  not  only  what  was  said, 
but  when  it  was  said. 

The  estimate  entertained  of  the  language  would  in- 
evitably be  affected  by  the  estimate  entertained  of  the 
people  who  spoke  it.  It  was  natural  that  a  contempt- 
uous feeling  should  exist  at  first  on  the  part  of  the  con- 
querors towards  the  conquered.  Though  little  evidence 
has  been  handed  down,  such  certainly  seems  to  have 
been  the  case.  One  early  authority  on  this  point  has 
now  indeed  been  set  aside.  Up  to  a  comparatively  late 
period,  the  History  which  purported  to  be  written  by 
[ngulph,  appointed  Abbot  of  Croyland  in  1076,  was  re- 
garded as  authentic,  and  ils  statements  were  implicitly 
<  1  edited.  In  this  work  it  was  asserted,  that,  after  the 
accession  of  William,  the    English   race  was   held   in 


The  Norman  Conquest.  53 

contempt  and  detestation ;  that  the  Normans  so  ab- 
horred the  language,  that  the  laws  of  the  land  and  the 
decrees  of  the  king  were  put  into  Latin ;  and  that  in 
the  schools  the  elements  of  grammar  were  imparted 
in  French.  Though  this  History  was  professedly 
the  production  of  a  contemporary  of  the  Conqueror, 
there  is  no  doubt  that  much,  if  not  all,  of  it,  was  a 
forgery  of  the  fourteenth  century.  Its  statements, 
therefore,  are  of  no  weight  as  belonging  to  the 
period  in  which  the  work  purports  to  have  been 
written.  Yet  a  certain  value  may  be  fairly  deemed  to 
attach  to  them,  as  embodying  the  opinion  which  had 
become  currently  accepted  in  later  times  as  to  the 
views  that  then  were  supposed  to  have  prevailed  after 
the  Conquest  about  the  English  race  and  language. 

Still  there  is  direct  evidence  that  contempt  was  both 
felt  and  expressed  by  the  foreigners  for  the  native 
population.  Henry  of  Huntingdon,  who  flourished  in 
the  former  half  of  the  twelfth  century,  in  speaking  of 
the  state  of  the  country  at  the  death  of  William  the 
Conqueror,  asserted  that  it  was  a  disgrace  to  be  even 
called  an  Englishman.  This  is  a  state  of  feeling  that 
would  of  necessity  pass  away  rapidly  with  the  descend- 
ants of  the  conquerors,  who  had  made  England  their 
permanent  home  ;  but  it  would  as  certainly  continue 
to  exist  with  those  subjects  of  the  English  king  who 
belonged  by  birth  and  family  ties  to  the  Continent. 
Evidence  of  the  prevalence  of  this  sentiment  on  their 
part  can  be  found  late  in  the  twelfth  century.  William 
de  Longchamp,  Bishop  of  Ely,  was  left  as  guardian 


54  English  Language. 

of  the  realm  by  Richard  I.  (i  1S9-1 199),  when  setting 
out  on  his  crusade.  This  minister  is  asserted  to  have 
felt  and  expressed  the  utmost  contempt  for  the  people 
he  was  called  upon  to  govern.  He  was  utterly  igno- 
rant of  the  English  tongue.  He  so  despised  the  race 
which  spoke  it  that  usual  forms  of  imprecation  were 
such  as  these  :  "  May  I  become  an  Englishman  if  I 
do  this  !  "  "  I  were  worse  than  an  Englishman  were 
I  to  consent  to  this." 

Feelings  of  this  kind  would  be  certain  to  extend  to 
the  language.  Still  there  is  no  evidence  that  any  at- 
tempt was  made  at  any  time  to  prevent  the  employment 
or  check  the  growth  of  the  popular  speech.  In  truth, 
the  ecclesiastical  historian,  Ordericus  Vitalis  (1075- 
1144),  tells  us,  that  William  the  Conqueror  strove  to 
make  himself  acquainted  with  it,  so  as  to  deal  with  his 
subjects  without  the  aid  of  an  interpreter  ;  and  his  lack 
of  success  was  not  due  to  indifference,  but  to  advancing 
age  and  want  of  leisure.  It  is  indeed  the  belief  of 
many  that  his  son,  Henry  I.,  who  reigned  from  1100 
to  1 135,  made  himself  master  of  the  English  language. 
But  if  he  did,  it  is  not  likely  that  his  example  found 
many  imitators.  The  tongue  of  the  common  people 
was,  in  truth,  in  the  eyes  of  the  Norman  a  barbarous 
one.  He  made  not  the  slightest  attempt  to  destroy 
it:  he  contented  himself  with  simply  despising  it.  To 
him  it  was  the  rude  speech  of  a  rude  people  which 
had  been  subjected  to  the  sway  of  a  superior  race. 

French  and  English  Languages  on  English  Soil.  — 
English,  indeed,  after  the  Conquest,  did  not  cease  to 


French  and  Englisli  in  England.  55 

be  a  written  language  :  it  did  cease  to  be  a  cultivated 
one.  None  of  those  conservative  influences  were  cast 
about  it  which  are  sure  to  prevent  rapid  and  radical 
changes  in  any  tongue  that  is  regularly  employed  by 
the  educated.  But  the  great  body  of  the  people 
clung  to  it.  They  were  ignorant,  and  they  corrupted 
it ;  but,  as  they  could  not  or  would  not  learn  the 
language  of  the  higher  classes,  they  preserved  it. 
While  French,  therefore,  continued  to  remain  for 
centuries  the  tongue  employed  in  polite  conversation ; 
while  it  and  Latin  were  the  ones  mainly  employed  in 
literature,  the  native  speech  could  not  and  did  not 
fail,  as  time  went  on.  to  make  its  influence  more  and 
more  felt  by  the  mere  weight  of  numbers  on  the  part 
of  those  using  it. 

It  has  been  an  assertion  frequently  made  that  the 
nobility  did  not  learn  to  speak  English  till  the  four- 
teenth century.  The  statement  may  be  true  to  this 
extent,  that  the  subjects  of  the  English  king  who 
were  born  and  brought  up  on  the  Continent,  and 
spent  there  much  of  their  lives,  never  learned  to 
speak  it  at  all.  But  it  is  against  all  probability  that 
those  members  of  the  higher  classes  who  were  natives 
of  the  island,  whose  interests  mainly  lay  there,  whose 
lives  were  largely  passed  there,  should  not  have  been 
able  to  understand  and  make  use  of  the  speech  of  the 
great  body  of  the  common  people  with  whom  they 
came  into  daily  contact.  From  the  very  first,  necessity 
would  have  forced  them  at  times  to  employ  English, 
even  if  French  were  the  language  of  their  choice. 


56  Engl  is  Ji  Language. 

There  is  indeed  ample  reason  to  believe  that  by  the 
end  of  the  thirteenth  century  English  had  become  the 
mother-tongue  of  the  children  of  the  nobility  dwelling 
in  England,  and  that  it  was  through  the  medium  of  it 
they  acquired  largely  their  knowledge  of  French. 
Several  copies  of  a  widely  circulated  text-book  then 
prepared  for  their  instruction  in  the  latter  language  are 
still  in  existence.1  It  contains  French  sentences,  with 
an  interlinear  translation  in  English.  This  certainly 
indicates  that  the  child  learned  invariably  the  native 
speech  in  infancy,  and  was  then  made  to  acquire 
the  speech  which  in  after  life  he  was  to  use  mainly. 
Though  this  text-book  belongs  to  the  close  of  the  thir- 
teenth century,  other  incidental  references  suggest 
that  the  custom  it  implies  was  probably  older.  One 
of  the  chief  reasons,  for  instance,  of  the  unpopu- 
larity of  Henry  III.  (i  214-1272)  was  the  favor  shown 
by  him  to  noblemen  who  came  from  the  Continent, 
and  who  would  naturally  have  little  knowledge  of 
purely  English  customs  and  little  sympathy  with  Eng- 
lish feelings.  This  was  one  of  the  grievances  that 
added  bitterness  to  the  civil  war  between  the  king 
and  the  barons.  In  giving  an  account  of  the  events 
of  1263,  one  of  the  writers  of  the  Chronicle,  miscalled 
Matthew  of  ^Yestminster's,  states  that  whoever  was 
unable  to  speak  the  English  language  was  regarded 
by  the  common  people  as  a  vile  and  contemptible 

1  It  was  the  work  of  Walter  <le  Biblesworth,  and  is  contained  in 
Thomas  Wright's  collection  of  "  .\u.i;lo-Saxon  and  Old  English 
Vocabularies,"  ist  ed. 


French  and  English  in  England.  57 

person.  If  this  assertion  be  true,  there  is  no  escape 
from  the  legitimate  inference  that  those  members  of 
the  nobility  whose  homes  were  in  the  island  must  have 
been  familiar  with  the  native  speech. 

It  is  easy  to  see,  however,  that  agencies  were  at 
work  that  tended  continually  to  bring  the  native 
tongue  into  disrepute.  These  were  especially  active 
after  the  accession  of  the  Angevin  dynasty.  The 
French  language  was  not  only  the  speech  of  the 
higher  classes  in  the  island,  but  it  was  also  the  speech 
of  a  large  number  of  subjects  of  the  English  ruler 
whose  homes  were  on  the  Continent.  Henry  II.,  who 
reigned  from  1154  to  n 89,  was  the  immediate  lord 
of  several  French  provinces,  so  that  his  possessions  in 
that  country  exceeded  in  extent  the  territory  under 
the  direct  control  of  the  king  of  France  himself. 
With  the  inhabitants  of  these  the  dominant  race  in 
England  was  closely  allied  in  blood  and  sympathy. 
The  French  was  likewise  a  language  which  had  already 
begun  to  develop  a  literature  of  some  interest  and 
value.  It  had  before  it  a  promising  future.  It  is 
evident  that  an  uncultivated  tongue  like  the  English 
was  at  an  immense  disadvantage  as  compared  with 
a  cultivated  one  existing  alongside  of  it.  Even  the 
island  itself  was,  to  a  great  degree,  simply  looked 
upon  as  a  storehouse  of  men  and  materials,  from 
which  its  kings  could  draw  supplies  to  prosecute  their 
designs  of  conquest  upon  the  Continent ;  and  the  lan- 
guage itself  could  not  hope  to  be  rated  at  as  high 
a  value  as  the  country  in  which  it  was  the  speech  of 


58  English  Language. 

the  lower  classes  only.  It  is  therefore  not  surprising 
that  for  a  time  there  should  be  not  only  a  continued, 
but,  within  certain  limits,  an  increasing  use  of  the 
French  upon  the  soil  of  Great  Britain. 

Had,  indeed,  the  English  monarchs  continued  to 
retain  their  possessions  in  France,  it  is  safe  to  say  that 
the  English  tongue  would  never  have  become  the 
vehicle  of  a  great  literature.  But  during  the  thirteenth 
century  events  occurred  that  changed  this  condition  of 
things.  The  French  provinces  that  had  been  directly 
under  the  sway  of  the  English  monarchs  gradually 
passed  out  of  their  hands ;  and  the  various  efforts 
made  then  and  subsequently  to  regain  them  were 
never  permanently  successful.  In  particular,  Nor- 
mandy, their  great  ancestral  fief,  was  lost  in  1204, 
during  the  reign  of  John.  This  had  the  inevitable 
effect  of  largely  transferring  the  interests  of  the  no- 
bility from  the  Continent  to  the  island.  Henceforth 
their  lot  was  to  be  cast  amid  the  English-speaking 
race  that  dwelt  upon  the  estates  held  by  them  in 
England. 

In  consequence  of  the  loss  of  the  English  possessions 
in  France,  feelings  of  hostility  were  certain  to  arise 
between  the  people  of  the  island  and  of  the  Continent. 
The  breach  between  them  was  still  further  widened 
by  the  action  taken  in  1244  by  the  French  king,  Louis 
IX.  In  that  year  he  summoned  to  Paris  all  the  no- 
bility of  England  who  had  possessions  in  France,  and 
gave  them  their  choice  of  relinquishing  their  property 
|n  the  one  country  or  the  other.     This  he  did  on  the 


French  and  English  in  England.  59 

manifest  ground  that  it  was  impossible  for  the  same 
man  to  be  the  faithful  subject  of  two  rulers,  always  in 
rivalry,  and  often  in  hostility.  They  were,  accord- 
ingly, required  to  give  up  one  or  the  other.  As  soon 
as  the  knowledge  of  this  transaction  came  to  the  ears 
of  the  English  king,  he  at  once  ordered  that  all  French- 
men, especially  Normans,  who  had  possessions  in  Eng- 
land, should  have  their  property  confiscated. 

The  first  effect  of  these  political  changes  was,  there- 
fore, to  cause  the  English  and  the  French  to  look 
upon  each  other  more  and  more  as  different  peoples. 
A  second  and  more  important  result  was  to  hasten 
the  union  between  the  English  of  native  and  of  foreign 
descent,  and  to  wipe  out  distinctions  of  any  kind 
heretofore  existing  between  them.  Yet  it  is  clear 
that  there  could  never  be  a  complete  union  without 
the  adoption  of  a  common  language  ;  and  this  had 
not  taken  place  at  the  end  of  the  thirteenth  century. 
It  could  not,  indeed,  take  place  as  long  as  French  was 
regarded  as  the  language  of  culture  and  of  literature, 
and  the  use  of  it  indicative  of  social  position.  The 
children  of  the  nobility  and  gentry  might,  and  doubt- 
less did,  learn  English  in  their  infancy.  But,  though 
familiar  with  it,  and  employing  it  with  their  inferiors, 
it  was  not  the  tongue  they  spoke  in  their  intercourse 
among  themselves. 

On  this  point,  we  have  the  direct  and  unimpeacha- 
ble testimony  of  contemporary  writers.  One  of  these 
belongs  to  the  very  close  of  the  thirteenth  century.  It 
is  an  observation  made  then  by  the  composer  of  the 


60  English  Language. 

rhymed  chronicle  which  has  commonly  gone  under 
the  name  of  Robert  of  Gloucester's.  In  giving  an 
account  of  the  conquest  of  England  by  William,  he  is 
led  to  speak  of  the  two  languages  still  existing  in  the 
country  side  by  side.  This  he  does  in  the  following 
words  :  — 

pus  com,  lo  !   Engelond  into  Normandies  hond. 

And  |>e  Normans  ne  cou|>e  speke  ho  bote  hor  owe  speche, 

And  speke  French  as  hii  dude  atom,  and  hor  children  dude  also 

teche. 
So  hat  heiemen  of  his  lond,  hat  of  hor  blod  come, 
Holdeh  alle  hulke  speche  hat  hii  of  horn  nome. 
Vor  bote  a  man  conne  Frenss,  me  telh  of  him  lute  ; 
Ac  lovve  men  holdeh  to  Engliss  and  to  hor  owe  speche  3ute. 
Ich  wene  her  ne  beh  in  al  he  world  contreyes  none 
pat  ne  holdeh  to  hor  owe  speche  bote  Engelond  one.1 

From  this  it  is  evident  that,  about  1300,  French 
was  still  the  language  of  the  higher  classes,  and  that 
to  be  ignorant  of  it  was  in  a  measure  a  social  stigma. 
Nor  did  this  feeling  speedily  die  out.  In  the  earlier 
half  of  the  fourteenth  century  flourished  Ralph  Hig- 
don,    a   monk    of    St.   YVerburgh's    in   Chester.      He 

1  Lo!  thus  came  England  into  the  possession  of  Normandy. 
And  the  Normans  could  then  speak  only  their  own  speech, 
And  spoke  French  as  they  did  at  home,  and   caused  their  children 

also  to  be  taught  it. 
So  that  noblemen  of  this  land,  that  come  of  their  blood, 
Hold  all  the  same  speech  that  they  from  them  received. 
For  unless  a  man  knows  French,  he  is  little  thought  of; 
Hut  low  men  keep  t"  English,  and  to  their  own  speech  yet. 
1  think  then?  he  not  m  all  th<-  world  any  countries 
that  do  not  hold  to  their  own  speech,  but  England  alone. 


French  and  English  in  England.  61 

wrote  in  Latin  a  history  of  the  world,  under  the  title 
of  "  Polychronicon  "  ;  and  in  it  he  gave  an  account  of 
the  languages  spoken  in  England,  and  of  the  corrup- 
tion that  had  crept  into  the  native  speech.  A  transla- 
tion of  this  work  was  made  in  the  same  century  by 
John  of  Trevisa,  vicar  of  Berkeley.  The  passage 
explanatory  of  the  corruption  that  had  overtaken  the 
tongue  he  rendered  in  the  following  words  :  — 

pis  apeyryng  of  the  burb-tonge  ys  bycause  of  twey  binges : 
—  on  ys,  for  chyldern  in  scole,  a3enes  the  vsage  and  manere  of 
al  ober  nacions,  bub  compelled  for  to  leue  here  oune  longage, 
and  for  to  construe  here  lessons  and  here  thinges  a  Freynsch, 
and  habbeb,  subthe  the  Normans  come  furst  into  Engelond. 
Also  gentil  men  children  bub  )'tau3t  for  to  speke  Freynsch 
fram  tyme  bat  a  bub  yrokked  in  here  cradel,  and  conneb 
speke,  and  playe  wib  a  child  hys  brouch;  and  oplondysch  men 
vvol  lykne  ham-sylf  to  gentil  men,  and  fondeb  with  gret  bysynes 
for  to  speke  Freynsch,  for  to  be  more  ytold  of.1 

The  words  of  Higden,  as  translated  by  Trevisa,  bear 
out  the  inference  previously  drawn  that  the  children 
of  the  higher  classes  first  learned  to  speak  English, 
but   from    their   earliest   years  were    sedulously  con- 

i  This  impairment  of  the  birth-tongue  is  because  of  two  things: 
one  is,  because  children  in  school,  against  the  usage  and  manner  of 
all  other  nations,  are  compelled  to  leave  their  own  language,  and  to 
construe  their  lessons  and  their  matters  in  French,  and  have,  since 
the  Normans  came  first  into  England.  Also,  gentlemen's  children 
are  taught  to  speak  French  from  (the)  time  that  they  are  rocked  in 
their  cradle,  and  can  speak,  and  play  with  a  child's  brooch  ;  and 
country  men  (or  rustics)  wish  to  make  themselves  like  gentlemen, 
and  strive  with  great  earnestness  to  speak  French,  in  order  to  be 
thought  the  more  of. 


62  liuglish  Language. 

strained  to  abandon  its  employment  among  them- 
selves, and  to  use  French  in  its  place.  This  was, 
however,  a  practice  that  under  the  conditions  then 
existing  could  not  long  continue.  There  is  evidence 
that  it  had  largely  ceased  before  the  middle  of  the 
fourteenth  century.  The  author  of  the  metrical  ro- 
mance of  "Arthur  and  Merlin,"  which  is  believed  to 
have  been  written  during  the  minority  of  Edward  III., 
speaks  of  the  advantages  derived  from  the  study  of 
Latin  and  French  in  the  schools  ;  but  he  adds  the  fol- 
lowing 


'.-i 


Right  is  that  Inglishe  Inglishe  understand, 
That  was  born  in  Inglond; 

Freynshe  use  this  gentilman, 
Ac  everich  Inglishe  can; 
Many  noble  I  have  yseighe, 
That  no  Freynshe  couthe  seye.1 

Here  is  a  direct  statement  that  French  was  unknown 
to  many,  while  English  was  known  to  all  ;  and  this  was 
without  doubt  increasingly  the  case  as  we  advance 
farther  into  the  fourteenth  century. 

In  truth,  by  the  middle  of  that  century  the  move- 
ment towards  the  general  adoption  of  the  native  speech 
had  acquired  a  momentum  which  could  no  longer  be 
resisted.      From  this  period,  signs  of  the  general  em- 

1  It  is  right  tli  hmen  understand  English, 

Who  w  ere  1><  »t  n  in  England  ; 
French, 
But  evei  y  one  knows  English  ; 
M.mv  .i  ii'  il ileman  1  have 
Who  could  speak  no  French. 


French  and  English  in  England.  63 

ployment  of  English  by  all  classes  in  the  community 
begin  to  multiply.  Traditions  connected  with  educa- 
tion are  among  the  last  to  lose  their  hold  upon  the 
mind  :  practices  connected  with  it  are  among  the  last 
to  be  abandoned.  But,  in  the  latter  half  of  the  four- 
teenth century,  instruction  through  the  medium  of 
the  French  had  to  a  great  extent  been  supplanted 
by  instruction  through  the  medium  of  the  English. 
On  this  point  we  have  positive  testimony.  Higden's 
account  of  the  state  of  the  language  belongs  tc  the 
earlier  half  of  the  fourteenth  century.  Trevisa's  ver- 
sion of  the  "  Polychronicon  "  was  completed  in  1387. 
In  it  he  felt  obliged  to  make  a  correction  of  the  state- 
ment found  in  his  original,  which  has  just  been  given. 
This  was  rendered  necessary  by  the  changes  that  had 
taken  place  between  the  time  the  book  was  written 
and  the  time  it  was  translated. 

Trevisa  asserted,  that,  since  the  great  pestilence  of 
1349,  called  the  Black  Death,  the  system  of  instruc- 
tion had  been  revolutionized.  Upon  the  remark  of 
Higden  that  the  children  of  the  higher  classes  were 
taught  French  from  their  cradles,  he  made  the  follow- 
ing comment :  — 

pys  manere  was  moche  yvsed  tofore  the  furste  moreyn,  and 
ys  sebthe  somdel  ychaunged.  For  Iohan  Cornwal,  a  mayster  <>t 
gramere,  chayngede  the  lore  in  gramer-scole,  and  construction  oi 
Freynsch  into  Englysch :  and  Richard  Pencrych  lurnede  bat 
manere  techyng  of  hym,  and  ober  men  of  Pencrych  ;  so  )>at 
now,  the  3er  of  oure  Lord  a  thousond  |>re  hondred  foure  score 
and  fyue,  of  he  secunde  Kyng  Richard  after  be  conquest  nyne, 
in   al   the   gramer-scoles  of   Engelond   children    leue)>   Frensch 


64  £&*£  Z<;;.v     \ 

construe^  And  lurnep  an  Engtysch,  and  habbeh  berhy  avaun- 

jje  yn  anoler :  here  avauntage 

-       at  a  lurneh  here  gramei  yn  lasse  tyme  than  childem  wet 

savauntag      -     it  now  childern  of  gramer-scole 

conneb  no  more  Fr<.    3  in  here    lift  heele.   and  bat  ys 

harm  for  ham.  an     is  passe  the  s 

::\  men)         -       -  -      _     .til  men  habbeb  now 

moche  yleft  for  to  teche  here  childern  Frensch.1 

There  is  even  more  convincing  evidence  as  to  the 
gen;  [option  of  English  by  all  classes  than  the 

_  in  the  method  of  instruction  in  the  schools. 
This  can  be  found  in  the  act  in  regard  to  the  plead- 
ings in  the  law-courts,  which  was  passed  by  the  Parlia- 
ment held  at  Westminster  in  136::,  the  thirty-sixth 
year  of  Edward  III.  The  preamble  recites  in  full 
reasons  which  led  to  the  making  of  the  statute  ; 
and.  in  spite  of  the  verbiage  usual  in  documents  of 
this  kind,  most  oi  it  is  well  worthy  of  quotation.  "  Be- 
se  it  is  often  shewed  to  the  king."  it  said.  "  by  the 

1  This  custom  was  much  used  before  the  first  pestilence,  and  is 
E    d.     For  a  teacher  of  gram- 

mar, changed  the  method  oi  instruction  in  the  grammar-school,  and 
(the)  coi  -  from  French  into  English;  and  Richard  Pencrich 

>m  him  that  manner  of  teaching,  and  other  men  from  Pen- 
crich :  so  that  now,  the  year  of  our  Lord  a  thousand  three  hundred 
four  -  I  five,  the  ninth  (year  of  the  reign)  of  the  second  king 

Rich  ujuest,  in  all  the  grammar-schools  of  England 

children  give  up  French,  and  construe  and  learn  in  English,  and 
have  thereby  advantage  on  one  side,  and  disadvantage  on  another. 
Their  advanl  irn  their  grammar  in  less  time  than 

children  were  wont  to  il  lis     [vantage  is.  that  now  grammar- 

school  children  know  no  more  French  than  their  left  heel  kr. 
and  that  is  .em,  if  tl  .md  travel  in 

I   in  many   (other  SO,  gentlemen 

•  now  much  left  teaching  their  children  French. 


French  and  English  in  England.  65 

prelates,  dukes,  earls,  barons,  and  all  the  commonalty, 
of  the  great  mischiefs  which  have  happened  to  divers  of 
the  realm,  because  the  laws,  customs,  and  statutes 
of  this  realm  be  not  commonly  known  in  the  same 
realm,  for  that  they  be  pleaded,  shewed,  and  judged 
in  the  French  tongue,  which  is  much  unknown  in  the 
said  realm  :  so  that  the  people  who  do  implead  or  be 
impleaded  in  the  king's  court,  and  in  the  courts  of 
others,  have  no  knowledge  nor  understanding  of  that 
which  is  said  for  them  or  against  them  by  their  Ser- 
jeants and  other  pleaders  ;  and  that  reasonably  the 
said  laws  and  customs  shall  be  the  sooner  learned  and 
known  and  better  understood  in  the  tongue  used  in 
the  said  realm,  and  by  so  much  every  man  of  the  said 
realm  may  the  better  govern  himself  without  offending 
of  the  law,  and  the  better  keep,  save,  and  defend  his 
heritage  and  possessions ;  and  in  divers  regions  and 
countries,  where  the  king,  the  nobles,  and  others  of 
the  said  realm  have  been,  good  governance  and  full 
right  is  done  to  every  person,  because  that  their  laws 
and  customs  be  learned  and  used  in  the  tongue  of  the 
country  :  the  king,  desiring  the  good  governance  and 
tranquillity  of  his  people,  and  to  put  out  and  eschew 
the  harms  and  mischiefs,  which  do  or  may  happen  in 
this  behalf  by  the  occasions  aforesaid,  hath  ordained 
and  established  by  the  assent  aforesaid,  that  all  pleas 
which  shall  be  pleaded  in  his  courts  whatsoever,  before 
any  of  his  justices  whatsoever,  or  in  his  other  places, 
or  before  any  of  his  other  ministers  whatsoever,  or  in 
the  courts  and  places  of  any  other  lords  whatsoever 


66  English  Language. 

within  the  realm,  shall  be  pleaded,  shewed,  de- 
fended, answered,  debated,  and  judged  in  the  English 
tongue." 

The  law  then  enacted  went  into  operation  at  the 
beginning  of  the  following  year.  It  is  a  natural  infer- 
ence, from  the  half-measures  attending  this  piece  of 
legislation,  that  the  English  element  had  become  pre- 
dominant, not  only  in  the  national  speech,  but  in  the 
national  character.  The  preamble  declared  that  the 
statutes,  in  order  to  be  known  and  better  understood, 
should  be  in  the  tongue  used  in  the  realm.  But  the 
act  itself  went  no  further  than  to  declare  that  the 
proceedings  in  courts  of  justice  must  be  in  the  native 
speech.  The  law  was  published  in  French,  the  very 
language  it  set  out  to  proscribe  :  and,  while  it  ordered 
that  the  pleadings  should  be  in  English,  it  went  on  to 
direct  that  they  should  be  enrolled  in  Latin. 

There  can  be  little  doubt  that  the  changes  which 
were  taking  place  were  looked  upon  by  many  with 
much  disfavor.  The  growing  ignorance  of  a  tongue 
which  was  coming  to  be  more  and  more  widely  used 
throughout  Christendom  was  regarded  almost  in  the 
light  of  a  calamity.  Trevisa's  remark,  that  the  chil- 
dren in  the  grammar-schools  knew  "no  more  French 
than  their  left  heel,"  was  re-echoed  in  the  alliterative 
poem  of  "  Piers  Plowman,"  by  Langland,  who,  in  the- 
ory at  least,  is  supposed  to  represent  the  sentiments 
of  the  common  people.  In  a  passage  inveighing 
against  the  general  ignorance  prevalent  in  his  day, 
he  says : — 


Rise  of  Modern  EnglisJi  Literature.       by 

Gramer,  the  grounde  of  al,  bigyleth  now  children; 
For  is  none  of  this  newe  clerkes,  whoso  nymeth  hede, 
That  can  versifye  faire,  ne  formalich  enditen; 
Ne  nou3t  on  amonge  an  hundreth,  that  an  auctour  can  con- 
strue, 
Ne  rede  a  lettre  in  any  langage  but  in  Latyn  or  in  Englissh.1 

Rise  of  Modern  English  Literature.  —  It  was  the 
Norman  Conquest  that  had  primarily  brought  about 
the  degradation  of  the  native  speech.  It  was  to 
the  loss  of  the  English  possessions  in  France  that  the 
steady  rise  in  the  estimation  and  general  use  of  the 
English  language  was  mainly  due.  This  movement 
which  political  changes  had  begun,  two  other  causes 
now  came  in  to  accelerate.  The  first  of  these  was  the 
creation  of  a  native  literature  of  a  character  which 
contributed  of  itself  to  give  respect  and  dignity  to  the 
tongue  in  which  it  was  written.  The  second  was  the 
variation,  steadily  widening,  which  showed  itself  be- 
tween the  French  spoken  in  the  island  and  the  French 
spoken  on  the  Continent ;  and  this,  from  the  nature 
of  things,  could  not  but  react  upon  the  estimation  in 
which  the  former  was  held. 

It  was  in  the  fourteenth  century  that  the  forces 
which  give  stability  and  credit  to  a  language  began 
first  to  operate  powerfully  upon  the  speech  employed 

1  Grammar,  the  ground  of  all  (studies),  now  leads  astray  children; 
For  there  is  no  one  of  these  new  clerks,  whoso  taketh  heed, 
That  can  versify  fairly,  or  compose  in  a  correct  manner, 
And  not  one  amongst  an  hundred  that  can  construe  an  author, 
Nor  read  a  letter  in  any  language  but  in  Latin  or  in  English. 

—  Pass/is  XV.,  B.  text,  lines  365-369. 


68  English  Language. 

by  the  great  body  of  the  people.  It  was  in  the  lat- 
ter half  of  that  century  that  English  literature,  in  the 
strict  sense  of  the  word  literature,  properly  begins. 
Numerous  works  had,  indeed,  been  written  between 
the  Conquest  and  this  period  ;  but,  with  the  excep- 
tion of  some  few  specimens  of  lyric  poetry,  there  had 
been  nothing  produced,  which,  looked  at  from  a 
purely  literary  point  of  view,  had  any  reason  to  show 
for  its  existence.  If  known  to  the  cultivated  classes 
at  all,  it  was  probably  treated  with  contempt ;  for  it 
was  certainly  contemptible  in  execution,  whatever  it 
may  have  been  in  design.  The  men  who,  during 
those  centuries,  wrote  in  English,  seem  to  have  done 
so  in  most  cases  because  they  had  not  the  knowledge 
or  the  ability  to  write  in  Latin  or  in  French.  To  a 
very  large  extent,  their  works  were  translations.  Com- 
positions on  dull  subjects,  and  which  themselves  im- 
parted additional  dulness  to  the  subjects  of  which  they 
treated,  could  not,  and  as  an  actual  fact  did  not,  have 
any  influence  worth  speaking  of  on  the  development 
of  the  native  speech.  They  are  frequently  of  great 
value  to  us  when  looked  at  from  certain  points  of 
view :  they  are  records  of  new  words  and  phrases 
that  had  come  in,  of  grammatical  changes  that  had 
taken  place,  of  linguistic  influences  of  every  kind  that 
had  been  and  still  were  at  work  ;  but  upon  the  speech 
of  the  people  of  that  time  they  exercised  no  percepti- 
ble influence.  Both  in  language  and  in  literature  men 
imitate  only  what  they  admire  ;  and  the  works  pro- 
duced in  English  for  nearly  three  centuries  following 


Rise  of  Modem  English  Literature.       69 

the  Conquest  could  not,  in  the  vast  majority  of  in- 
stances, be  admired. 

But  in  the  latter  half  of  the  fourteenth  century  a 
number  of  eminent  writers  in  the  native  speech  arose. 
Modern  investigation  has  indeed  deprived  our  litera- 
ture of  one  of  the  most  noted  of  these  early  authors, 
with  whom  it  has  previously  been  credited.  This  was 
Sir  John  Mandeville,  who  was  at  one  time  frequently 
styled  "  the  father  of  English  prose."  In  the  prologue 
to  the  account  of  travels  that  goes  under  his  name,  he 
is  represented  as  saying  that  he  first  wrote  the  work 
in  Latin,  turned  it  from  that  tongue  into  French,  and 
then  from  French  into  English.  It  is  now  established 
that  the  book  is  largely  a  compilation  made  up  from 
the  writings  of  previous  travellers.  It  is  fairly  certain 
that  it  was  originally  written  in  French,  and  translated 
into  English  about  the  end  of  the  fourteenth  century. 
It  is  an  open  question,  indeed,  if  the  assumed  author, 
Sir  John  Mandeville,  had  any  existence  at  all. 

Other  writers  there  were,  however,  at  this  period, 
who  gave  distinction  to  the  language.  About  1362, 
Langland  executed  the  first  version  of  his  famous 
alliterative  poem,  "  The  Vision  of  Piers  Plowman." 
Two  later  versions  appeared,  one  about  1377,  and  the 
other  about  1393.  All  three  had  a  wide  circulation. 
During  the  last  quarter  of  the  century,  Gower,  after 
composing -works  in  Latin  and  in  French,  tried  writing 
in  English  also,  at  the  request,  as  he  tells  us,  of  King 
Richard  II.  He  produced  in  this  last-named  tongue 
a  poem  of  about  thirty-two  thousand  lines,  entitled 


jo  English  Language. 

"  Confessio  Amantis."  But  the  two  great  authors  of 
this  time  are  Wycliffe  and  Chaucer ;  and  their  influ- 
ence upon  the  language  cannot  well  be  over-esti- 
mated. The  translation  of  the  Scriptures,  completed 
about  1380  by  the  former  and  his  disciples,  and  revised 
about  1390  by  Purvey,  was  circulated  far  and  wide. 
Its  effect  upon  the  development  of  the  English  speech 
has  been  permanent.  To  it  we  owe  that  peculiar 
religious  dialect,  alike  remarkable  for  simplicity,  for 
beauty,  and  for  force,  which  we  see  preserved  still  in 
our  authorized  version  of  the  Bible,  and  which  renders 
the  prose  of  that  work  distinct  from  every  other  exist- 
ing form  of  English  prose. 

Wycliffe  brought  out  several  other  treatises  in  the 
native  speech,  all  of  them  in  prose.  Yet  though  these 
are  effectively  written,  it  is  only  through  this  transla- 
tion of  the  Bible  that  he  can  be  said  to  have  exerted 
a  lasting  influence  upon  our  tongue.  What  he  did 
for  the  language  of  religion,  Chaucer  did  for  the  lan- 
guage of  literature.  In  his  works,  especially  in  the 
"Canterbury  Tales,"  men  for  the  first  time  had  great 
models  in  the  native  speech  ;  and  the  dialect  in  which 
he  wrote  became  the  one  universally  employed  in  lit- 
erature, largely  in  consequence  of  his  writing  in  it. 
His  genius  it  was  that  gave  dignity  to  the  speech  in 
which  it  found  manifestation.  His  influence  was  the 
more  powerful  because  his  choice  of  the  native  tongue 
was  not  due  to  his  ignorance  of  French  or  of  Latin, 
nor  to  a  desire  to  reach  the  lowest  class  of  the  people 
as  well  as  the  highest,  but  was  a  course  deliberately 


Rise  of  Modern  Englisli  Literature.       yi 

adopted  under  the  conviction  that  the  English  lan- 
guage was  the  only  one  in  which  Englishmen  had  any 
business  to  write. 

It  is  clear,  indeed,  that,  not  only  then  but  even  much 
later  there  was  great  doubt  as  to  the  future  of  the 
native  speech.  Govver,  as  has  just  been  seen,  en- 
trusted to  three  languages  a  reputation  which  even 
with  their  aid  has  been  hardly  able  to  maintain  itself 
in  one.  The  authority  of  Chaucer's  name  and  exam- 
ple was,  therefore,  not  unnecessary  in  this  matter.  He 
died  in  1400;  and,  for  more  than  a  century  after 
his  death,  and  especially  after  the  revival  of  classical 
learning,  it  was  still  a  venturesome  undertaking  for 
an  Englishman  to  write  in  English  if  he  could  write 
in  Latin.  A  hundred  and  fifty  years  later,  Roger 
Ascham,  one  of  the  greatest  scholars  of  his  age, 
wrote  a  book  on  archery,  entitled  "Toxophilus."  It 
was  first  published  in  1545.  In  his  dedication  of  the 
work  to  the  gentlemen  and  yeomen  of  his  native  land, 
he  felt  it  necessary  to  apologize  for  having  written  it  in 
the  native  speech.  "  If  any  man  would  blame  me," 
said  he,  "  either  for  taking  such  a  matter  in  hand,  or 
else  for  writing  it  in  the  English  tongue,  this  answer  I 
may  make  him  :  that,  what  the  best  of  the  realm 
think  it  honest  for  them  to  use,  I,  one  of  the  meanest 
sort,  ought  not  to  suppose  it  vile  for  me  to  write. 
And  though  to  have  written  it  in  another  tongue  had 
been  both  more  profitable  for  my  study,  and  also  more 
honest  for  my  name,  yet  I  can  think  my  labor  well 
bestowed,  if,  with  a  little  hinderance  of  my  profit  and 


72  English  Language. 


my  name,  may  come  any  furtherance  to  the  pleasure 
or  commodity  of  the  gentlemen  and  yeomen  of 
England,  for  whose  sake  I  took  this  matter  in  hand." 
And  again,  in  his  dedication  of  the  same  work  to  the 
king,  Henry  VIII.,  he  says  that  it  would  have  been 
easier,  and  fitter  for  his  profession,  to  have  written  the 
book  in  Latin  or  in  Greek. 

The  case  of  Ascham  is  by  no  means  an  extreme  one, 
though  he  makes  conspicuous  the  comparative  disre- 
pute into  which  English  had  fallen,  in  consequence  of 
the  enthusiastic  devotion  which  in  his  time  was  begin- 
ning to  be  paid  to  the  great  classic  writers  of  Greece 
and  Rome.  This  feeling  about  the  native  tongue 
showed  itself  as  strongly  in  the  seventeenth  century. 
In  1623,  seven  years  after  the  death  of  Shakspeare, 
Bacon  spent  no  small  part  of  his  time  in  turning  his 
books,  originally  written  in  English,  into  Latin.  He 
did  this  with  the  avowed  object  of  saving  them  for 
posterity.  In  the  dedication  of  the  third  edition  of 
his  Essays  to  the  Duke  of  Buckingham,  written  in 
1625,  he  says,  "  I  do  conceive  that  the  Latin  volume 
of  them  (being  in  the  universal  language)  may  last  as 
long  as  books  last."  The  immense  incapacity  of  an 
author  of  the  seventeenth  century,  and  that  author 
Bacon,  to  comprehend  the  future  of  his  native  tongue, 
is,  perhaps,  the  highest  tribute  that  can  be  paid  to 
that  great  author  of  the  fourteenth  century  who  delib- 
erately trusted  his  reputation  entirely  to  it. 

Debasement  of  Anglo-Norman  French.  —  The  sec- 
ond cause  for  the  preference  of  English   to  French, 


Debasement  of  Anglo-Norman  French.      73 

which  showed  itself  more  and  more  during  the  four- 
teenth century,  was  largely  a  result  of  the  loss  of  Nor- 
mandy. At  the  time  of  the  Conquest,  and  for  a  long 
period  following,  there  was  no  one  tongue  in  North- 
ern France  recognized  by  all  as  the  classic  French 
language.  There  were,  instead,  four  great  dialects 
of  it,  corresponding  to  four  great  political  divisions. 
These  were  the  Norman,  the  Picard,  the  Burgundian, 
and  the  French  of  the  Isle  of  France,  which  last  is 
strictly  the  only  one  that  then  bore  the  name  of 
French.  Each  of  these  had  a  literature  of  its  own, 
and  the  distinction  of  speech  between  all  of  them  was 
marked  enough  to  impress  itself  upon  the  men  of  that 
time  and  is  plainly  recognized  now  in  the  literary 
monuments  that  have  been  handed  down.  Of  these 
four  dialects,  it  was  the  Norman  that  in  the  eleventh 
century  was  carried  over  into  England. 

In  France,  as  in  England,  it  was  political  considera- 
tions that  decided  the  character  of  the  speech  that  was 
to  become  generally  adopted.  In  987,  Hugh  Capet, 
Duke  of  France,  was  elected  its  king.  At  first,  his 
sovereignty,  outside  of  his  immediate  possessions,  was 
little  more  than  nominal.  The  great  provinces  were 
practically  independent,  and  the  languages  spoken  in 
them  were  on  an  equality.  But,  during  the  centuries 
following,  the  power  of  the  French  royal  house  steadily 
rose,  and  that  of  its  feudal  dependents  as  steadily 
sank.  Under  its  immediate  control,  especially  in  the 
thirteenth  century,  fell  many  territories  over  which  it 
had  previously  exercised  merely  a  superior  lordship. 


74  English  Language. 

The  dialect  it  employed  was  the  dialect  of  its  ances- 
tral dominions,  the  Isle  of  France,  in  which  Paris  is 
situated.  As  it  extended  its  authority  over  the  neigh- 
boring districts,  it  extended  along  with  it  the  use  of 
its  own  form  of  speech.  The  French  of  Paris  spread 
gradually  over  the  conquered  provinces.  It  came  to 
be  considered  the  exclusive  language  of  culture  and 
of  literature,  the  language  which  every  one  spoke  who 
looked  upon  himself  as  belonging  to  the  higher  classes. 
This  had  the  inevitable  effect  of  confining  the  previ- 
ously independent  tongues  of  the  great  provinces  to 
the  use  of  the  peasantry.  These  tongues,  therefore, 
became  dialects,  which  the  literary  language  no  longer 
recognized  as  possessing  any  authority  ;  or  they  even 
sank  to  that  lower  form  of  dialect,  peculiar  to  certain 
districts  or  certain  classes,  which  we  call  patois. 

This  was  what  took  place  in  Normandy  after  its  loss 
by  the  English  crown  in  the  early  part  of  the  thirteenth 
century.  But,  bad  as  the  speech  of  Normandy  might 
come  to  appear  as  compared  with  that  of  Paris,  it 
would  naturally  seem  far  worse  with  that  dialect  after 
it  had  been  transported  to  England,  and  cut  off  from 
direct  communication  with  the  same  dialect  on  the 
Continent.  Divergences  would  naturally  arise.  The 
Norman- French  of  the  island  would  and  did  intro- 
duce words  and  forms  that  belonged  to  the  varying 
dialects  of  the  various  provinces  of  the  Continent  that 
from  time  to  time  fell  under  the  sway  of  the  kings  of 
England.  It  would  be  and  it  was  affected  by  the 
pronunciation  of  the  English  of  the  native  inhabitants. 


Debasement  of  Anglo-Norman  French.     75 

Later  it  was  subjected  to  the  overshadowing  influence 
of  the  French  of  Paris.  It  accordingly  came  to  have 
a  special  development  of  its  own. 

Anglo-French,  in  consequence,  was  in  many  particu- 
lars unlike  the  provincial  speech  of  Normandy  or  of 
any  of  the  other  dialects  used  on  the  Continent.  Dur- 
ing the  course  of  the  centuries,  it  was  certain  to  deviate 
further  and  further  from  the  French  which  had  come 
to  the  front  as  the  classic  form  of  the  language.  It 
could  not  fail,  therefore,  to  share  in  the  depreciation 
which  is  always  sure  to  overtake  variations  from  what 
has  become  the  standard  form  of  the  speech.  Such 
would  necessarily  be  its  fate  in  France.  Such  was 
also  its  fate  in  England.  References  exist  to  the 
low  estimate  in  which  it  was  held  in  the  fourteenth 
century  in  both  countries.  In  the  "  Canterbury  Tales," 
Chaucer  introduces  as  one  of  the  characters  a  Prioress, 
who  is  represented  as  paying  special  attention  to  form 
and  ceremony.  As  a  fashionable  woman,  she  felt  it 
incumbent  to  speak  French,  but  was  unable  to  speak 
what  had  then  come  to  be  regarded  as  pure  French. 
He  says  :  — 

And  Frenssh  she  spak  ful  faire  and  fetysly, 
After  the  scole  of  Stratford-atte-Bowe, 
For  Frenssh  of  Parys  was  to  hire  unknowe. 

On  the  other  hand,  in  the  prologue  to  "The  Testament 
of  Love,"  written  by  a  contemporary  of  Chaucer,  and 
long  imputed  to  him,  there  occurs  a  sentence  which 
marks  plainly  the  contemptuous  opinion  entertained 


j6  English  Language. 

by  the  French  of  the  debased  Anglo-Norman  dialect 
found  in  England.  "  In  Latin  and  French,"  said  the 
author,  "  hath  many  sovereign  wits  had  great  delight 
to  endite,  and  have  many  noble  things  fulfilled  ;  but 
certes  there  be  some  that  speak  their  poesy  matter  in 
French,  of  which  speech  the  Frenchmen  have  as  good 
a  fantasy  as  we  have  in  hearing  of  Frenchmen's  Eng- 
lish." 

General  Adoption  of  English  by  all  Classes.  —  All 
these  agencies  co-operated  in  bringing  about  the 
adoption  of  the  native  speech  by  all  classes  ;  yet  at 
the  end  of  the  fourteenth  century,  while  the  success 
of  English  was  well  assured,  its  victory  was  even  then 
far  from  complete.  As  was  not  unnatural,  French, 
after  it  ceased  to  be  necessary,  came  to  be  fashion- 
able ;  and  its  use  long  survived  its  usefulness.  In 
fact,  it  had  been  for  centuries  the  language  not  only 
of  law  and  of  judicial  proceedings,  but  also  of  offu  ial 
communications  of  all  sorts.  This  continued  to  be  the 
case  after  it  had  gone  entirely  out  of  use  as  the  speech 
df  any  portion  of  the  people.  Nearly  all  the  letters 
of  Henry  IV.,  who  ruled  from  1399  to  1413,  are 
written  in  it  or  in  Latin.  Indeed,  in  the  early  part 
of  the  reign  of  that  monarch  it  almost  seems  as  if  it 
were  not  considered  respectful  to  address  him  in 
English.  Letters  to  him  are  even  found  written  in 
two  languages.  The  writer  begins  in  French,  as  if 
that  were  the  correct  thing  to  do,  but,  under  the 
inability  to  express  himself  with  sufficient  clearness 
or  urgency,  passes  over  to  the  more  familiar  English. 


Disuse  of  French  in  England.  JJ 

There  is  even  a  more  significant  illustration  of  this 
feeling  in  a  letter  of  the  Scottish  Earl  of  March,  dated 
Feb.  i8s  1400,  in  which  he  offered  his  services  to  the 
English  king  and  entreated  his  support.  At  the  close 
it  contained  an  apology  for  being  written  in  the  Eng- 
lish language.  "  And,  noble  prince,"  says  the  earl, 
"  mervaile  yhe  nocht  that  I  write  my  lettres  in  Ejig- 
lishe,  fore  that  ys  mare  clere  to  myne  understandyng 
than  Latyne  or  Fraunche." 

But,  during  the  whole  reign  of  Henry  IV.  and  his 
successor  Henry  V.  (1 413-1422),  the  marks  of  grow- 
ing unfamiliarity  with  French  rapidly  accumulate.  One 
of  the  most  striking  instances  of  this  is  to  be  found, 
indeed,  in  the  very  earliest  part  of  the  fifteenth  cen- 
tury, in  the  case  of  the  negotiations  that  took  place  in 
1404,  between  France  and  England,  in  regard  to  the 
outrages  committed  by  each  nation  at  sea.  There 
were  three  ambassadors  on  the  part  of  the  latter 
power,  one  of  whom  was  a  professor  of  both  the  civil 
and  the  canon  law.  In  a  letter  to  the  French  Council, 
dated  Sept.  1,  1404,  they  beg  that  the  answer  may  be 
returned  to  them  in  Latin,  and  not  in  French.  Again, 
in  a  letter  of  the  3d  of  October  to  the  Duchess  of 
Burgundy,  they  state,  that  although  the  treaties  be- 
tween England  and  France  had  been  wont  to  be 
drawn  up  in  French  by  the  consent  of  the  temporal 
princes  concerned  in  them,  who  did  not  understand 
Latin  as  well  as  French,  yet  all  the  letters  missive  that 
had  passed  between  the  contracting  parties  had  been 
written  in  the  former  tongue,  as  being  the  common 


78  English  Language. 

and  vulgar  idiom  ;  and  this  custom  they  desire  to 
have  continued.  Later  on  the  reasons  for  these  two 
requests  are  distinctly  given.  On  the  21st  of  October, 
in  acknowledging  the  reception  of  a  communication 
from  the  French  ambassadors,  they  complain  of  its 
being  written  in  French,  and  state,  that,  for  men 
unlearned  as  they  are,  it  might  as  well  have  been  put 
into  Hebrew.  It  is  a  most  striking  proof  of  the  gen- 
eral ignorance  of  French  that  had  come  to  prevail  in 
England,  that  ambassadors  selected  to  carry  on  deli- 
cate and  difficult  negotiations,  one  of  whom  was  a 
scholar  by  profession,  should  have  been  utterly  unac- 
quainted with  the  language  of  the  people  with  which 
terms  of  settlement  were  to  be  made,  —  a  language, 
moreover,  which  was  still  mainly  used  in  official  docu- 
ments in  their  own  country. 

But  during  the  whole  of  the  fifteenth  century  this 
ignorance  kept  on  steadily  increasing  among  all  classes. 
A  necessary  result  was  to  substitute  the  native  for  the 
foreign  speech  in  all  the  transactions  of  life,  including, 
what  is  always  the  last  to  be  altered,  prescribed 
forms.  It  was  sometimes  the  case  that  the  higher 
orders  changed  their  methods  far  sooner  than  those 
inferior  to  them  in  position.  It  was  in  the  first  half 
of  this  century  that  many  of  the  London  guilds  began 
to  have  their  regulations  translated  from  French  into 
English,  and  to  use  the  latter  tongue  in  keeping  their 
bonks.  A  curious  entry  in  the  records  of  the  Com- 
pany of  lirewers  asserts  directly  that  the  greater  part 
of  the  Lords  and  Commons  had  begun  to  have  the 


Disuse  of  French  in  England.  79 

proceedings  in  which  they  were  concerned  written 
down  in  the  native  language.  Furthermore,  it  seems 
to  say  that  direct  influence  was  exercised  by  King 
Henry  V.  to  substitute  the  use  of  English  for  French. 
Of  the  entry,  which  is  in  Latin,  the  following  is  a 
translation :  "  Whereas,  Our  mother-tongue,  to  wit, 
the  English  tongue,  hath  in  modern  days  begun  to  be 
honorably  enlarged  and  adorned  :  for  that  our  most 
excellent  lord,  King  Henry  the  Fifth,  hath,  in  his 
letters  missive,  and  divers  affairs  touching  his  own 
person,  more  willingly  chosen  to  declare  the  secrets 
of  his  will ;  and,  for  the  better  understanding  of  his 
people,  hath,  with  a  diligent  mind,  procured  the  com- 
mon idiom  (setting  aside  others)  to  be  commended 
by  the  exercise  of  writing  ;  and  there  are  many  of  our 
craft  of  brewers  who  have  the  knowledge  of  writing 
and  reading  in  the  said  English  idiom  ;  but  in  others, 
to  wit,  the  Latin  and  French,  before  these  times  used, 
they  do  not  in  any  wise  understand  ;  for  which  causes, 
with  many  others,  it  being  considered  how  that  the 
greater  part  of  the  Lords  and  trusty  Commons  have 
besmn  to  make  their  matters  to  be  noted  down  in  our 

O 

mother-tongue,  we  also  in  our  craft,  following  in  some 
manner  their  steps,  have  decreed  in  future  so  to  com- 
mit to  memory  the  needful  things  which  concern  us." 
At  last,  towards  the  close  of  the  fifteenth  century, 
the  laws  enacted  by  Parliament  were  put  into  English. 
After  the  Conquest,  they  had  usually  been  published 
in  Latin  ;  but  in  the  reign  of  the  first  Edward 
(1272-1307),  at   the   very  period    the    French   was 


8o  English  Language. 

beginning  to  lose  its  hold  upon  the  nation,  it  was 
introduced  into  the  statutes.  In  these  it  gradually 
supplanted  the  Latin,  and  by  the  end  of  the  four- 
teenth century  the  latter  tongue  was  no  longer  used  in 
legislative  enactments.  At  the  end  of  the  fifteenth 
century,  French,  in  turn,  had  given  way  to  English. 
During  the  reign  of  Richard  III.  (1483-1485),  the 
laws  appear  —  at  least  in  some  instances  —  to  have 
been  written  in  both  tongues.  Early,  however,  in  the 
reign  of  his  successor,  Henry  VII.,  English  began 
to  be  exclusively  used.  With  this  accomplished, 
the  triumph  of  the  popular  speech  may  be  called 
complete. 

Scattered  instances,  it  is  true,  of  the  employment 
of  French  can  be  found  at  a  much  later  period.  In- 
struction in  the  schools  through  the  medium  of  that 
tongue  had  been  generally  given  up,  as  we  have  seen, 
before  the  end  of  the  fourteenth  century.  Yet  it  un- 
doubtedly continued  to  survive  for  a  long  time  in  par- 
ticular places.  Even  as  late  as  the  reign  of  Henry 
VIII.  (1509-1547),  at  the  time  of  the  dissolution  of 
the  monasteries,  it  was  still  found  taught  in  one  of  the 
conventual  schools.  A  letter  to  Cromwell  from  John 
Ap  Rice,  one  of  the  visitors  of  religious  houses,  relat- 
ing to  the  monastery  of  Laycock  in  Wiltshire,  men- 
tions a  form  of  French  as  still  being  used  there  which 
was  certainly  then  used  by  no  people  to  whom  that 
tongue  was  a  native  speech.  "The  house,"  he  says, 
"is  very  clean,  well-repaired,  and  well-ordered:  and 
one  thing  I  observed  worthy  the  advertisement  (i.e. 


Disuse  of  French  in  ling' and.  81 

notice)  there.  The  Ladies  have  their  Rule,  the  Insti- 
tutes of  their  Religion,  and  the  ceremonies  of  the 
same  written  in  the  French  tongue,  which  they  under- 
stand well,  and  are  very  perfitt  in  the  same.  Albeit 
that  it  varieth  from  the  vulgar  French  that  is  now 
used,  and  is  much  like  the  French  that  the  Common 
Law  is  written  in." 

It  is  likely  indeed,  that  the  efforts  first  to  obtain 
and  then  to  retain  the  English  sovereignty  of  France, 
which  went  on  in  the  earlier  half  of  the  fifteenth  cen- 
tury, had  a  tendency  to  retard  to  some  extent  the 
general  abandonment  of  the  French  speech.  This  at 
least  was  apparently  the  case  with  men  belonging  to 
the  legal  profession.  These  seem  to  have  clung  with 
special  tenacity  to  that  tongue.  As  late  as  1549, 
Cranmer,  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  arguing  with 
those  who  insisted  that  the  mass  should  be  celebrated 
in  Latin,  declared  that  he  had  "  heard  suitors  murmur 
at  the  bar  because  their  attorneys  had  pleaded  their 
cases  in  the  French  tongue  which  they  understood 
not."  Still,  instances  of  the  kind  just  mentioned  are 
nothing  but  accidental  survivals.  They  are  no  evidence 
of  the  wide  prevalence  of  that  tongue  in  England  at 
that  time  —  no  more  so,  in  fact,  than  it  would  now  be 
evidence  of  its  prevalence  in  this  country  or  in  Great 
Britain,  that  the  word  oyes  (Anglo-French,  oyez 
'hear  ye')  is  still  used  in  courts  of  law  to  proclaim 
silence,  or  that  the  words  La  Reine  (or  Le  Roi)  le  veut, 
'The  Queen  wills  it,'  are  still  the  ones  employed  to 
signify  the  royal  assent  to  an  act  of  parliament. 


CHAPTER   V. 

PERIODS  IN  THE  HISTORY  OF  THE  ENGLISH 
LANGUAGE,  AND  THE  CHANGES  WROUGHT  IN 
IT  BY   THE   NORMAN   CONQUEST. 

What  was  this  popular  speech,  which,  at  the  end 
of  the  fourteenth  century,  was  for  the  first  time  mani- 
festing its  capability  of  becoming  the  vehicle  of  a 
great  literature?  It  was  certainly  not  the  Anglo- 
Saxon.  Between  that  and  it  had  taken  place  a  diver- 
gence even  more  profound  and  wide-reaching  than 
that  which  marks  the  separation  of  French  from  its 
parent  Latin.  The  tongue  spoken  or  written  by  an 
Englishman  of  the  tenth  century  would  have  been  as 
unintelligible  to  an  Englishman  of  the  fourteenth  as 
it  is  to  an  Englishman  of  the  nineteenth.  In  the 
course  of  those  four  hundred  years  the  language  had 
not  simply  suffered  modification,  or  undergone  de- 
velopment, it  had  experienced  revolution.  Nor  was 
this  popular  tongue  precisely  that  which  is  found  in 
the  literature  of  to-day;  though  the  differences  be- 
tween it  and  our  present  speech  are  differences  of 
degree,  and  not  of  kind;  or,  to  make  use  of  the  same 
form  of  statement  already  employed,  they  are  differ- 

82 


English  after  the  Conquest.  83 

ences  that  have  arisen  from  modification  and  develop- 
ment, and  not  at  all  from  revolution.  To  bring  out 
the  general  nature  of  the  divergence  in  grammar  and 
vocabulary  that  came  into  being  between  the  English 
of  the  tenth  and  eleventh  centuries  and  that  of  the 
fourteenth  will  be  the  aim  of  the  present  chapter. 

The  Language  before  the  Conquest.  —  Let  us  at  this 
point  recount  briefly  the  results  already  reached. 
Up  to  the  Norman  Conquest  the  linguistic  situation 
may  be  thus  described:  A  Low-Germanic  tongue  was 
the  speech  of  all  the  Teutonic  inhabitants  of  Great 
Britain  from  the  Channel  to  the  Frith  of  Forth.  It 
was  called  by  those  who  then  spoke  it,  Eng/isc,  that 
is,  'English,'  but  is  now  styled  by  some  Anglo-Saxon, 
by  others  Old  English.  In  this  tongue  there  existed 
several  dialects.  One  of  these,  the  West-Saxon,  had 
become  the  language  of  law  and  of  literature, —  the 
language  in  which  the  educated  classes  talked  and 
wrote.  Into  this  language  there  had  been  introduced 
in  the  course  of  centuries  a  very  slight  number  of 
Celtic  and  of  Norse  words,  and  a  much  larger  num- 
ber of  Latin  ones.  But,  notwithstanding  these  addi- 
tions, it  continued  to  be  —  what  it  had  been,  not 
merely  as  regards  grammar,  but  also  as  regards  vocab- 
ulary—  essentially  a  Teutonic  tongue. 

The  Language  after  the  Conquest.  —  With  the  in- 
troduction of  Norman-French,  this  state  of  affairs 
underwent  a  change.  It  was  not  that  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  ceased  to  be  a  spoken  language,  or  even  a 
written  one;  but  it  did  cease  to  be  a  cultivated  one. 


84  English  Language. 

One  result  of  this  was,  that  the  West-Saxon  dialect 
sank  speedily  from  its  position  of  supremacy,  and  in 
process  of  time  fell  to  the  level  of  the  other  dialects 
which  it  had  itself  supplanted.  The  inevitable  effect 
was,  that  the  popular  speech  was  left  to  run  its  own 
course,  without  any  restraining  influence  whatever. 
Each  district  had  words  and  forms  and  syntactical 
constructions  and  methods  of  pronunciation  of  its 
own,  which  were  little  known  or  used  outside  of  its 
borders.     Everything  was  in  confusion. 

Such  a  result  as  this  is  something  that  is  always  sure 
to  occur  when  a  cultivated  tongue  comes  to  be  used 
exclusively  by  the  uneducated  or  the  partially  edu- 
cated. No  standard  of  authority  exists  anywhere  in  it, 
which  is  felt  to  be  binding  upon  all.  The  influence 
of  the  old  literature  has  passed  away;  for  it  is  em- 
bodied in  a  form  of  speech  which  has  gone  or  is 
rapidly  going  out  of  use.  As  yet  no  great  authors 
have  risen  to  establish  methods  of  expression  to 
which  the  speech  of  the  better  class  will  be  made  to 
conform.  There  are  few,  if  any,  books  written  in 
this  new  developing  tongue.  There  are  but  few  per- 
sons to  read  those  that  are  written.  Learned  almost 
wholly  by  the  ear,  and  scarcely  at  all  by  the  eye,  the 
language  is  specially  subject  to  the  phonetic  and 
linguistic  changes  of  all  kinds  that  rude  and  ignorant 
men  may  bring  about  by  modifying  pronunciation, 
by  confounding  declensions  and  conjugations,  by  dis- 
regarding syntactical  laws,  in  short,  by  all  the  numer- 
ous processes  of  decay  and  regeneration  to  which  a 


English  after  the  Conquest.  85 

living  tongue  is  subject  by  the  very  fact  of  its  being 
a  living  tongue.  To  such  influences  as  these  the 
native  speech  was  exposed,  with  little  check,  after 
the  Conquest;  and  it  at  once  entered,  in  conse- 
quence, upon  a  series  of  rapid  and  violent  changes. 

These  changes  were  of  several  kinds;  but  there 
were  two  principal  ones.  One  of  them  was  the  loss 
of  inflections  in  the  native  speech;  the  other,  the 
introduction  into  it  of  French  words.  The  latter  is 
a  direct  result  of  the  Conquest;  the  former,  only  an 
indirect  one.  This  is  clear  from  the  fact  that  even 
before  the  Conquest  the  process  of  stripping  the 
speech  of  its  inflection  had  already  begun  to  show 
itself.  Furthermore,  it  has  taken  place  on  a  large 
scale  in  the  case  of  other  Teutonic  peoples,  whose 
languages  have  been  subject  to  none  of  the  influences 
that  follow  subjugation  by  a  foreign  race  speaking  a 
foreign  tongue.  What,  therefore,  the  introduction 
of  Norman-French  into  England  did  was  to  hasten 
rapidly  that  abandonment  of  inflection  by  the  Eng- 
lish speech,  which,  in  a  greater  or  less  degree,  was 
certain  to  come  some  time.  But  besides  this,  it  had 
a  powerful  influence  upon  the  extent  to  which  this 
abandonment  took  place.  The  inhabitants  of  the 
island  were  largely  cut  off  by  their  position  from  con- 
tact with  foreign  nations.  At  the  time  of  the  French 
invasion  they  had  developed  a  literature  of  their  own. 
These  two  conditions  would  have  concurred  to  pre- 
vent the  loss  of  inflections  on  any  extensive  scale,  had 
not  the  abolition  of  any  standard  of  authority,  result- 


86  English  Language. 

ing  from  the  Conquest,  thrown  the  native  speech  into 
a,  chaotic  state  and  interfered  throughout  with  its 
orderly  development. 

The  changes  that  took  place,  as  a  result  of  the 
Conquest,  indirectly  in  the  inflectional  system,  and 
directly  in  the  vocabulary,  of  the  English  tongue, 
were  so  numerous  and  great  that  it  has  been  cus- 
tomary to  give  the  language  during  several  centuries 
different  names.  It  is  of  itself  a  convincing  proof 
of  the  confused  and  varying  character  of  our  early 
speech,  that  scarcely  any  two  scholars  have  agreed 
upon  the  titles  or  dates  of  the  periods  which  they 
have  adopted.  This  is  not  at  all  to  be  wondered  at. 
Scientific  precision  in  such  respects  is  not  attainable 
in  even  the  most  cultivated  and  stable  tongues. 
Dates  in  the  history  of  a  language  are  convenient  for 
reference ;  they  are  worth  little  for  accuracy  of 
statement.  Men  do  not  use  one  form  of  speech  one 
year,  and  a  different  form  the  following  year.  This, 
which  is  true  of  any  tongue,  no  matter  how  marked 
the  changes,  is  especially  true  of  the  earlier  stages 
of  our  own,  in  which  the  changes  were  not  merely 
rapid,  but  in  which  they  were  unequal  in  different 
parts  of  the  country.  The  language  of  the  North  of 
England  advanced  much  more  quickly  toward  Modern 
English  than  the  language  of  the  South;  and  a  state- 
ment, in  consequence,  which  would  be  true  of  the 
one,  might  be  grossly  false  of  the  other. 

Periods  of  the  English  Language.  —  It  is,  accord- 
ingly, to  be  borne  in  mind  that   the   titles  and   dates 


Periods  of  English.  87 

about  to  be  given  are  in  themselves  of  no  authority, 
and  are  used  mainly  as  a  matter  of  convenience;  that 
the  same  terms,  when  employed  by  others,  may  not 
and  often  do  not  mean  the  same  things;  that  other 
divisions,  and  an  entirely  different  nomenclature, 
will  be  found  in  other  works  treating  upon  this  same 
subject.  In  particular,  there  is  a  division  and  a 
nomenclature  now  frequently  used,  with  which  it  may 
be  important  for  the  student  to  be  familiar.  Accord- 
ing to  this,  the  language  down  to  1100  —  sometimes 
to  1 1 50 — -is  termed  Old  English;  from  that  date  to 
about  1500,  Middle  English,  and  from  1500  to  the 
present  day,  Modern  English.  With  this  understand- 
ing, it  is  only  necessary  to  add  that  the  following  will 
be  the  names  and  limits  of  the  periods  into  which, 
in  this  volume,  English  is  divided  :  — 

I.  The  Anglo-Saxon  period  will  embrace  that  form 
of  the  language  spoken  from  the  first  coming  of  the 
Saxons  and  Angles  —  that  is,  from  the  middle  of  the 
fifth  century  —  to  the  middle  of  the  century  following 
the  Norman  conquest,  — that  is,  to  the  year  1150. 

II.  The  Old  English  period  will  embrace  the  form 
of  the  language  spoken  between  1150  and  1350. 

III.  Middle  English  will  embrace  the  form  of  the 
language  used  between  1350  and  1550. 

IV.  Modern  English  will  be  the  name  given  to  the 
language  as  spoken  from  the  middle  of  the  sixteenth 
century  to  the  present  time. 

The  following  schedule  represents,  accordingly,  the 


88  English  Language. 

nomenclature  of  the  periods,  with  their  limits,  as 
employed  in  this  volume :  — 

I.  Anglo-Saxon 450-1 150 

II.  Old  English 1 150-1350 

III.  Middle  English I3S°-i5SO 

IV.  Modern  English 1 550— 

Furthermore,  when  it  is  desired  to  use  a  general 
term  covering  the  period  between  1150  and  1550, 
the  term  "  Early  English  "  will  be  employed.  This 
corresponds  essentially  with  the  period  designated  as 
the  Middle  English  by  those  who  apply  to  Anglo- 
Saxon  the  term  Old  English. 

Literature  of  the  Old  English  Period.  —  Of  the 
literature  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  period,  a  slight  account 
has  already  been  given.  In  the  Old  English  period 
there  were  composed  a  large  number  of  works,  many 
of  which  still  exist  only  in  manuscript.  To  a  great 
extent  they  are  translations  from  the  French,  or  a 
working-over  of  French  productions.  As  regards 
their  subject-matter,  they  may  be  divided  into  the 
following  classes :  — 

1.  Religious  works.  Of  these,  one  of  the  earliest 
and  on  the  whole  the  most  important  is  the  "Ormu- 
lum,"  a  poem  without  rhyme  or  alliteration,  written 
about  1200,  by  an  Augustinian  monk  named  Ormin 
or  Orm.  It  is  essentially  a  life  of  Christ  made  up 
from  the  Gospels.  It  is  marked  by  one  peculiarity, 
which  has  made  it  of  special  importance  in  the  his- 
tory of  English  pronunciation.     It  intentionally  car- 


Literature  of  the  Old  Engl  is  Ji  Period.     89 

ries  out  one  principle  which  has  to  some  extent 
governed  the  spelling  of  our  speech.  This  is  the 
doubling  of  the  consonant  after  a  short  vowel.  Thus, 
for  illustration,  and,  under,  taken,  birth,  appear  in 
this  poem  as  annd,  unnderr,  takenn,  and  birrth, 
while  word,  book,  write,  and  right  are  spelled  as  at 
present.  There  were  also  a  number  of  works  of  a 
moral  and  religious  character,  both  in  prose  and 
verse;  homilies  and  homiletic  treatises,  some  of 
which  are  of  an  earlier  date  than  the  "Ormulum"; 
legends  of  saints  and  martyrs;  and  versions  of  his- 
tories or  parts  of  histories  contained  in  the  Bible, 
intermixed  with  narratives  drawn  from  other  sources. 
2.  Romances  and  legendary  history.  These  may 
be  said  to  begin  with  the  "Brut,"  a  poem  composed 
about  the  same  time  as  the  "  Ormulum"  by  a  Worces- 
tershire priest  named  Layamon.  It  is  a  chronicle, 
embodying  that  fabulous  history  of  Britain,  which  for 
several  centuries  was  accepted  as  true.  The  poem 
takes  its  name  from  a  mythical  Brutus,  a  great-grand- 
son of  y^neas,  who  collected  the  descendants  of  the 
Trojans  that  had  been  taken  captive  by  the  Greeks, 
freed  them  from  their  slavery,  and  after  various 
adventures  conducted  them  to  Britain,  which  received 
from  him  its  name.  It  then  gives  an  account  of  the 
lives  and  actions  of  the  legendary  kings  who  suc- 
ceeded, down  to  the  occupation  of  the  country  by  the 
Saxons.  In  this  list  of  monarchs  the  names  of  Lear 
and  Cymbeline  have  been  made  especially  familiar 
tn  students  of  literature  by  the  plays  of  Shakspeare. 


90  English  Language. 

The  work  of  Layamon  has  been  handed  down  in 
two  versions,  the  first  of  which  is  dated  about  1200, 
while  the  second  is  thought  to  be  about  fifty  years 
later.  Besides  the  "Brut,"  there  is  a  long  list  of 
romantic  narratives  dealing  with  the  fortunes  of 
purely  fictitious  characters,  such  as  Havelock,  King 
Horn,  Sir  Bevis  of  Hampton,  and  the  Knights  of 
Arthur's  Round  Table,  or  with  events  largely  ficti- 
tious in  the  lives  of  real  personages,  such  as  Alexander 
the  Great,  Charlemagne,  and  Richard  I.  of  England. 

3.  Histories.  These  were  in  part  fabulous,  it  is 
true,  but  not  so  deemed  by  their  authors.  They 
belong  exclusively  to  the  latter  half  of  the  Old  Eng- 
lish period,  and  consist  of  chronicles  in  verse  by  a 
writer  commonly  termed  Robert  of  Gloucester,  and 
by  Robert  Manning  of  Brunne.  The  work  of  the 
latter  is  a  translation  from  the  French  of  Pierre  de 
Langtoft.  Both  of  these  writers  treat  of  the  history 
of  Britain  from  the  legendary  coming  of  Brutus  to  a 
period  near  their  own  time;  the  former  ending  with 
the  accession  of  Edward  I.  in  1272;  the  latter,  with 
his  death  in  1307. 

4.  Shorter  poems,  either  of  a  satirical  or  of  a  purely 
lyrical  character.  The  latter  are  much  the  more 
abundant.  The  most  conspicuous  among  these  are 
"The  Land  of  Cokaygne,"  the  "Ule  and  Nihtegale  " 
(the  Owl  and  Nightingale),  and  a  series  of  lyric 
poems  of  a  political,  devotional,  or  social  nature. 
The  works  in  all  these  classes  are  of  the  highest  value 
to  the  student  of  the  language;  but  it  is  only  those  of 


Alliterative  Verse  and  Rhyme.  91 

this  last  class  that  have  any  claim  whatever  to  literary 
excellence, and  these  are  comparatively  few  in  number. 
Alliterative  Verse.  —  One  feature  worthy  of  men- 
tion, that  characterizes  the  Old  English  period,  is 
the  tendency  to  abandon  alliteration,  and  substitute 
for  it  final  rhyme.  In  Anglo-Saxon  verse  instances 
of  rhyme  are  occasional,  and  probably  often  purely 
accidental;  at  any  rate,  it  is  only  in  a  piece  of 
eighty  lines  that  it  is  deliberately  employed  through- 
out, and  in  that  it  is  mixed  with  alliteration,  with 
the  result  that  no  modern  scholar  has  been  successful 
in  getting  any  coherent  meaning  out  of  the  poem,  or 
rather  of  putting  any  into  it.  It  was  not  until  after 
the  Norman  Conquest  that  rhyme  came  to  be  regu- 
larly employed.  Even  then  it  was  apt  to  be  more  or 
less  combined  with  alliteration,  especially  in  the  early 
part  of  the  Old  English  period.  Though  it  soon 
began  to  be  discarded,  the  pure  alliterative  verse  did 
not  die  out  entirely  till  the  sixteenth  century.  It  main- 
tained its  ground  in  the  North  long  after  it  had  been 
disused  in  the  South.  Chaucer,  in  the  "Canterbury 
Tales,"  comments  on  these  distinguishing  peculiarities 
of  the  two  parts  of  the  island,  when,  in  the  following 
lines,  he  represents  the  parish  priest  as  preferring  to 
say  what  he  has  to  say  in  prose,  instead  of  adopting 
either  of  the  two  forms  of  verse  then  in  use  :  — 

But  trusteth  wel,  I  am  a  Southern  man. 

I  can  not  geste  x  —  rom,  ram,  ruf —  by  lettre, 

Ne,2  God  wot,  rym  holde  I  but  litel  bettre. 

1  Compose  a  story.  2  Nor. 


92  English  Language. 

Yet  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  alliterative  verse  was 
the  favorite  form  of  versification  in  the  North,  and 
did  not  die  out  till  the  sixteenth  century,  the  most 
conspicuous  work  composed  in  it  belongs  to  the 
fourteenth  century,  and  to  the  dialect  of  the  Mid- 
land. This  is  "The  Vision  of  Piers  Plowman."  It 
exists  in  three  versions,  and  the  opening  lines  of  the 
prologue  in  the  first  version  will  exemplify  the  char- 
acter it  had  come  to  assume,  as  contrasted  with  the 
alliterative  verse  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  period1:  — 

In  a  somer  sesun  ■  whon  softe  was  be  sonne, 

I  schop  me  into  a  schroud  ■  a  scheep  as  I  were ; 

In  habite  of  an  hermite  ■  vnholy  of  werkes, 

Wende  I  wydene  in  bis  world  ■  wondres  to  here. 

Bote  in  a  Mayes  morwnynge  ■  on  Malueme  liulles 

Me  bifel  a  ferly  ■  a  feyrie,  me  bouhte; 

I  was  weori  of  wandringe  •  and  wente  me  to  reste, 

Vndur  a  brod  banke  •  bi  a  bourne  syde, 

And  as  I  lay  and  leonede  ■  and  lokede  on  the  watres, 

I  slumberde  in  a  slepyng  ■  hit  sownede  so  murie.2 


1  See  page  30. 

2  In  a  summer  season  ■  when  mild  [soft]  was  the  sun, 

I  put   [shaped]    me  into  a  garment   [shroud]  ■  as  if   I   were  a 

shepherd ; 
In  habit  of  a  hermit  ■  unholy  of  acts  [works], 
Went  I  wide  about  in  this  world  -wonders  to  hear. 
I  .nt  on  a  May  morning-  on  Malvern  hills 
There  befell  me  a  wonder-  of  fairy  origin,  methought. 
I  was  weary  of  wandering  -  and  wont  to  rest  me, 
Under  a  broad  bank  -  by  the  side  of  a  stream  [burn]  , 
And  as  I  lay  and  leaned  ■  and  looked  on  the  waters, 
I  slumbered  in  a  sleep  -  it  sounded  so  merrily. 

In  the  version  here  given  the  modern  forms  of  the  words,  for 
which  others  are  substituted,  arc  added,  enclosed  in  brackets. 


Grammatical  Changes  in  Old  English.     93 

The  inferiority  of  alliterative  verse  to  rhyme  as  an 
instrument  of  expression,  led  to  its  abandonment  by 
all  the  Teutonic  nations  at  comparatively  early  peri- 
ods in  their  literary  history. 

Changes  in  Grammar  between  Anglo-Saxon  and  Mid- 
dle English.  —  A  more  detailed  account  of  the  changes 
that  took  place  in  the  grammatical  structure  after  the 
Conquest  will  be  found  in  the  second  part;  here  but 
a  slight  summary  can  be  given.  Comparisons  can 
necessarily  be  made  only  between  periods  which  have 
a  standard  literature  of  their  own.  Outside  of  these 
no  general  statements  are  trustworthy.  The  several 
dialects  of  English  varied  widely  in  the  order  and 
degree  of  their  development,  and  therefore  what  is 
true  of  one  at  a  particular  time  would  be  untrue  of 
the  rest.  Grammatical  forms  which  appear  regu- 
larly in  one  author  would  not  be  found  at  all  in 
another,  writing  at  the  very  same  time.  Accordingly, 
comparison  will  in  this  particular  case  be  made 
between  the  literary  West-Saxon,  and  that  dialect  of 
English  which  was  employed  by  the  great  writers  of 
the  fourteenth  century.  It  was  they  who  established 
the  language  of  literature.  Of  them  Chaucer,  as  the 
greatest  of  all,  may  be  selected  as  the  representative. 
Consequently  it  is  his  usage  that  will  be  taken  as 
the  standard  by  which  the  extent  and  character  of  the 
changes  that  had  gone  on  are  to  be  tested. 

One  further  fact  is  to  be  borne  in  mind.  Whatever 
may  be  the  limits  fixed  upon  for  the  periods  in  the 
history  of  any  tongue,  and  whatever  characteristics 


94  English  Language. 

may  be  attributed  to  these  periods,  assertions  made 
in  regard  to  them  can  only  be  true  generally;  they 
are  always  subject  to  specific  exceptions.  To  illus- 
trate this  point,  let  us  take  its,  the  genitive  of  the 
neuter  pronoun  of  the  third  person.  It  is  not  till  the 
Modern  English  period  that  it  came  into  existence. 
It  took  the  place  of  his,  which  had  been  previously 
the  neuter  as  well  as  masculine  genitive.  It  would 
be  right,  therefore,  to  say  that  his,  as  the  genitive  of 
the  neuter  pronoun  of  the  third  person  is  not  char- 
acteristic of  Modern  English.  Yet,  while  this  is  true 
generally,  it  is  so  far  from  being  true  specifically,  that 
his  can  be  found  where  we  should  now  use  its,  for  a 
hundred  years  after  the  Modern  English  period  begins. 
We  meet  with  it  in  the  works  of  Shakspeare  and 
Milton,  and  it  appears  frequently  in  the  authorized 
version  of  the  Bible,  as  in  verses  like  the  following: 
"  If  the  salt  have  lost  his  savor,  wherewith  shall  it  be 
salted?" 

Let  us  begin,  then,  with  the  modifications  which 
the  inflectional  system  underwent.  These  are  first 
brought  to  our  knowledge  by  certain  orthographical 
changes  which  took  place  in  consequence  of  a  change 
in  pronunciation.  Two  of  them  are  of  special  impor- 
tance. One  is  the  weakening  into  e  of  the  vowels  a, 
o,  and  u  of  the  terminations.  Thus,  in  Anglo-Saxon, 
-an  is  the  regular  ending  of  the  infinitive:  it  was 
soon  after  the  Conquest  weakened  into  -en.  'To  tell,' 
in  the  eleventh  century  was  tellan:  in  the  twelfth 
century  it  became  telle n.     So,  in  like  manner,  oxa, 


Grammatical  Changes  in  Old  English.     95 

'ox, '  became  oxe  ;  oxan,  'oxen, '  became  oxen  ;  s tanas, 
'stones, '  and  s tolas,  'stools, '  became  stanes  and  stoles  ; 
caru,  'care,'  became  eare.  This  was  a  change  that 
was  certain  to  happen  in  English,  as  in  the  other 
Teutonic  languages,  had  the  Norman-French  never 
set  foot  in  Britain.  All  the  effect  produced  by  their 
coming  was  to  hasten  its  general  adoption;  and 
during  the  twelfth  century  it  did  become  generally 
established. 

The  second  change  was  the  dropping  of  the  final  -;/, 
—  a  peculiarity  which  the  Northumbrian  dialect,  as 
has  been  seen  (p.  46),  exhibited  at  an  early  day. 
This,  however,  was  much  slower  of  general  adoption 
than  the  weakening  of  the  vowels  a,  0,  and  //.  In 
truth,  though  common  much  earlier,  it  did  not  become 
thoroughly  established  till  the  latter  part  of  the 
fifteenth  century.  This  final  -//  can  be  found  even 
in  the  sixteenth  century  or  later,  though  it  then  sur- 
vived merely  as  an  archaism.  Its  gradual  disappear- 
ance from  the  endings,  working  in  conjunction  with 
the  weakening  of  the  vowels  a,  o,  and  u  just  men- 
tioned, had  the  effect  of  making  the  final  -e  the  one 
termination  of  the  Middle  English  which  represented 
nearly  all  the  terminations  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  that 
had  been  preserved  at  all.  Accordingly,  in  the  study 
of  this  one  ending  is  involved  the  study  of  nearly 
the  whole  grammatical  inflection  of  that  period.  It 
was,  moreover,  largely  due  to  the  steady  reduction 
of  all  terminations  to  this  single  one,  that  the  confu- 
sion sprang  up  in  usage,  which,  in  turn,  led,  in  great 


96  English  Language. 

measure,  to  the  rejection  of  inflection  altogether. 
What  there  was  left  of  it  in  the  fourteenth  century, 
compared  with  Anglo-Saxon,  will  be  stated  very 
briefly.  There  are  exceptions  to  the  universal  appli- 
cability of  the  results  to  be  here  given,  but  they  are 
neither  numerous  nor  important. 

In  the  noun,  the  two  leading  declensions  of  the 
Anglo-Saxon  —  the  vowel  or  strong,  and  the  consonant 
or  weak1  —  with  their  several  subordinate  declen- 
sions, had  been  reduced  to  the  one  inflection  seen  in 
the  masculine  noun  of  the  vowel  declension.  Dis- 
tinction between  the  terminations  of  the  nominative, 
dative,  and  accusative  singular  had  practically  dis- 
appeared. The  only  case  which  had  a  form  of  its 
own  was  the  genitive,  which  ended  in  -es.  This  uni- 
fying process  had  gone  on  even  more  thoroughly  in 
the  plural.  All  the  four  cases  had  there  been  reduced 
to  a  common  form,  which  is,  as  now,  the  same  as 
that  of  the  genitive  singular.  This  -es  of  the  genitive 
singular  and  of  the  plural  usually  formed  a  distinct 
syllable  in  pronunciation,  at  least  in  monosvllabic 
nouns.     Thus  kings  would  be  pronounced  as  kinges. 

The  adjective  in  Anglo-Saxon  was  very  rich  in 
inflections.  By  the  latter  part  of  the  fourteenth 
century  it  had  been  nearly  stripped  of  them.  All 
that  was  left  to  represent  the  numerous  termina- 
tions that  once  existed  was  the  final  -e,  and  this 
was  not  used  extensively.  Its  main  employment 
was    to    distinguish    the     plural    from    the    singular. 

1  Sec  Part  II.,  sees.  24,  25,  and  27. 


Grammatical  Changes  in   Old  English.     97 

Thus,  while  in  the  latter  number  we  should  have 
old  man,  in  the  former  we  should  have  aide  men. 
Obviously  even  this  distinction  could  not  prevail  in 
the  case  of  adjectives,  such  as  nen<e,  grene,  blithe, 
which  themselves  ended  in  -e.  The  disappearance  of 
the  terminations  led  also  to  the  disappearance  of  the 
difference  between  the  two  original  declensions  of  the 
adjective,  — the  definite  and  the  indefinite.1  A  trace 
of  the  former  continued  to  manifest  itself  in  the 
addition  of  e  in  certain  cases  to  the  singular.  For 
illustration,  the  adjective  preceded  by  the,  or  a  de- 
monstrative pronoun,  would  end  in  -e.  To  make  use 
of  the  example  given  above,  we  should,  when  using 
the  definite  declension,  say  the  or  that  tide  man. 
This  grammatical  form  was  still  common  at  the 
beginning  of  the  Middle  English  period. 

The  personal  pronouns  and  the  interrogative  'who 
1  A.  S.  Inua)  were  somewhat  more  fortunate  in  pre- 
serving their  inflection.  They  retained  a  distinct 
form  for  the  case  which  we  now  call  the  objective: 
and  this  was  founded  upon  the  original  dative,  the 
original  accusative  having  been  given  up.  The 
difference  of  form  between  these  two  cases  had  even 
during  the  Anglo-Saxon  period  begun  to  disappear  ■/ 
in  the  pronouns  of  the  first  and  the  second  person. 
Thus  the  original  accusatives  mec  and  usic  were  then 
frequently  replaced  by  the  datives  me  and  us.'2  This 
tendency  was  carried  on  still  further  after  the  Con- 
quest, and  was  extended  to  the  pronoun  of  the  third 

1  See  Part  II.,  sees.  69-73.  "  Ib-  secs-  103-  II0'  and  x34- 


98  English  Language. 

person.  Accordingly  June,  the  accusative  of  he  was, 
replaced  by  the  dative  him.  In  a  similar  way  kit/one, 
the  original  accusative  of  the  interrogative  hwa,1 
gave  way  to  hwam,  'whom.'  The  only  exception  to 
the  universality  of  this  rule  was  in  the  case  of  the 
neuter  pronoun  of  the  third  person,  in  which  the 
original  accusative  hit,  'it,'  became  the  objective. 
This  was  due,  however,  to  the  fact  that  its  original 
dative  him  had  come  to  be  limited  to  the  masculine. 

A  further  loss  was  the  dual  number,  which  in 
Anglo-Saxon  survived  to  a  certain  extent  in  the  pro- 
nouns of  the  first  and  second  persons.2  This  had 
disappeared  entirely,  and  at  a  comparatively  early 
period.  Furthermore,  in  the  case  of  the  pronouns  of 
the  third  person,  in  or  heo,  the  earlier  form  for  the 
nominative  plural  had  been  abandoned,  and  its 
place  was  supplied  by  they,  or  thei,  strictly  the 
plural  of  a  demonstrative  pronoun.  Accordinglv  in 
Chaucer  the  inflection  of  this  plural  is  they,  here, 
'their,'  hem,  'them.'  Pronouns  which  had  inflec- 
tions resembling  those  of  the  adjective  had  been 
stripped  of  them  in  the  same  manner  as  they. 

In  the  case  of  the  verb,  while  the  distinction 
between  the  two  leading  conjugations  still  continued 
to  exist  as  now,  the  barriers  between  the  subordinate 
conjugations  under  each  had  been  largely  broken 
down.  Again,  the  verbs  of  the  strong  or  old  conju- 
gation—  that  is,  verbs  like  drive,  drove,  which  add 
nothing  to  form  the  preterite,  and  suffer  vowel  change 

1  Sec  Part  II.,  sec.  134.  -  lb.  sec.  103. 


Grammatical  Changes  in  Old  English.       99 

—  had  in  vast  numbers  passed  over  to  the  weak  con- 
jugation, that  is,  to  verbs  like  light,  lighted,  which 
take  an  additional  syllable  or  letter  to  form  the 
preterite.  The  inflections,  to  some  extent,  were 
still  retained;  thus,  for  illustration,  they  tell was  they 
te/len  or  they  telle.  The  use  of  compound  verb- 
phrases,  such  as  /  have  told,  I  shall  tell,  had  been 
vastly  extended.  In  particular,  at  this  very  time, 
the  employment  of  do  and  did  with  the  infinitive  — 
as  in  /  do  give,  I  did  give  —  was  just  beginning  to 
come  into  use. 

A  consideration  of  these  statements  shows  that 
Middle  English  differs  but  slightly  in  its  grammati- 
cal structure  from  the  English  of  to-day.  In  fact, 
no  small  proportion  of  the  difficulty  that  the  modern 
reader  at  first  encounters  in  examining  the  literature 
of  this  period  is  due  merely  to  difference  of  orthog- 
raphy. A  passage  from  Chaucer  in  the  original 
spelling,  and  in  modern  spelling  so  far  as  it  can  be 
employed,  will  illustrate  better  than  pages  of  descrip- 
tion the  essential  likeness,  and  the  extent  of  the  un- 
likeness,  that  prevail  between  the  language  of  the 
fourteenth  century  and  that  of  the  nineteenth.  Fur- 
thermore, when  it  is  compared  with  the  specimens  of 
the  English  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  period,  found  on 
pp.  30,  33,  it  will  show  clearly  how  wide  was  the 
chasm  that  separated  the  language  of  the  fourteenth 
century  from  that  of  the  eleventh. 

In  the  modernized  version  of  the  following  passage 
from  the  beginning  of  the  Wife  of  Bath's  tale,  as  told 


ioo  English  Language. 

in  the  "Canterbury  Tales,"  the  pronunciation  of 
syllables  no  longer  sounded  is  marked  by  the  sign'  ; 
the  accentuation  of  syllables  either  not  accented  or 
not  sufficiently  accented  now  is  marked  by  the  sign  '; 
while  the  insertion  of  a  hyphen  between  syllables 
shows  that  they  are  all  to  be  pronounced. 

"  In  thol  !e  dayes  of  the  Kyng  Arthour, 
Of  which  that  Britons  speken  greet  honour, 
Al  was  this  land  fulfild  of  fayerie ; 
The  elf  queen  with  hir  joly  compaignye, 
Daunced  ful  ofte  in  many  a  grene  mede; 
This  was  the  olde  opinion,  as  I  rede. 
I  speke  of  manye  hundred  yeres  ago; 
But  now  kan  no  man  se  none  elves  mo. 
For  now  the  grete  charitee  and  prayeres 
Of  lymytours  and  othere  hooly  freres, 
That  serchen  every  lond  and  every  streem, 
As  thikke  as  motes  in  the  sonne  beem, 
Blessynge  halles,  chambres,  kichenes,  boures, 
Citees,  burghes,  castels,  hye  toures, 
Thropes,  bernes,  shipnes,  dayeryes, 
This  maketh  that  ther  been  no  fairyes. 
For  ther  as  wont  to  walken  was  an  elf, 
Ther  walketh  now  the  lymvtour  hym  self, 
In  undermeles  and  in  morwenynges, 
And  seyth  his  matyns  ami  his  hooly  thynges 
As  he  gooth  in  his  lymytacioun. 
Wommen  may  go  now  saufly  up  and  doun, 
In  every  bussh  or  under  every  tree; 
There  is  noon  other  incubus  but  he." 

"In  tli'  olde  dayes  of  the  King  Arthour, 
Of  which  that  Britons  speaken  great  honour, 
All  was  this  land  fulfilled  of  fa-e-ry; 


Lexical  Changes  in  Old  English.         ioi 

The  elf-queen,  with  her  jolly  company, 
Danced  full  oft  in  many  a  greene  mead; 
This  was  the  old  opinion,  as  I  read. 
I  speak  of  many  hundred  years  ago; 
But  now  can  no  man  see  none  elves  mo. 
For  now  the  greate  charity  and  prayeres 
Of  limiters  1  and  other  holy  freres, 
That  searchen  every  land  and  every  stream, 
As  thick  as  motes  in  the  sunne-beam, 
Blessing  halles,  chambers,  kitchenes,  bowers, 
Cities,  boroughs,  castles,  highe  towers, 
Thorpes,'2  barnes,  shipnes,3  da-i-ries, 
This  maketh  that  there  be  no  fa-i-ries. 
For  there  as  wont  to  walken  was  an  elf. 
There  walketh  now  the  limiter  himself, 
In  undermeles4  and  in  morwenynges, 5 
And  saith  his  matins  and  his  holy  thinges 
As  he  goth  in  his  lim-i-td-ti-on. 
Women  may  go  now  safely  up  and  down, 
In  every  bush  or  under  every  tree; 
There  is  none  other  incubus  but  he.  " 

Change  in  the  Vocabulary.  —  Such  is  a  brief  outline 
of  the  principal  changes  that  took  place  in  the  inflec- 
tional system  of  the  English  tongue.  Many  of  them 
would  doubtless  have  happened  had  there  been  no 
Norman  Conquest;  but  to  that  event  were  certainly 
due  both  the  rapidity  with  which,  and  the  extent  to 
which,  they  were  carried  out.  But  the  second  great 
change  we  have  to  consider  was  a  direct  result  of  the 
Conquest.  This  was  the  introduction  of  foreign 
words  into  the  vocabulary.     It  was  a  process  which, 

1  A  begging  friar,  assigned  a  certain  limit  for  begging. 

2  Villages.  3  Stables.  4  Afternoons.  s  Mornings. 


102  English  Language. 

in  certain  respects,  transformed  the  character  of  our 
speech. 

The  coming  of  the  Normans  into  England  brought 
two  languages  into  close  geographical  connection. 
French,  as  has  been  pointed  out,  was  the  speech  of 
the  higher  classes,  English,  that  of  the  great  body  of 
the  people.  Yet  for  two  centuries  these  tongues 
existed  side  by  side,  without  the  latter  borrowing 
words,  to  any  extent,  from  the  former.  It  is  not 
necessary  to  assume  that  this  condition  of  things  was 
due  to  any  hostility  between  the  races,  or  to  any  dis- 
inclination on  the  part  of  the  conquered  people  to 
use  the  language  of  their  conquerors.  On  the  con- 
trary, an  opposite  state  of  feeling  prevailed  in  both 
respects.  There  was  undeniably  contempt  felt  and 
expressed  at  times  for  the  native  population,  espe- 
cially by  those  members  of  the  higher  classes  whose 
interests  were  largely  on  the  Continent.  Not  so  with 
those  who  were  born  and  brought  up  in  the  island,  and 
looked  upon  it  as  their  permanent  home.  Between 
them  and  the  native  English  the  fusion  of  races  had 
gone  on  rapidly.  Even  in  the  twelfth  century  it  was 
not  always  possible  to  tell  whether  any  particular  per- 
son, if  a  freeman,  was  of  Norman  or  of  English  de- 
scent. Such,  at  least,  is  the  assertion  of  Richard, 
bishop  of  London,  in  his  treatise  entitled  Dialogus 
de  Scaccario,  'Dialogue  on  the  Exchequer.'  This 
work  was  written,  as  he  tells  us,  in  the  23d  year  of 
Henry  II.,  that  is,  in  1177,  when  he  was  treasurer  of 
the  exchequer.     "Now,"  he  says,  "in  consequence 


Lexical  Changes  in  Old  English.        103 

of  the  English  and  the  Normans  dwelling  together, 
and  marrying  and  giving  in  marriage  wives  from 
among  each  other,  the  peoples  are  so  mixed,  that  it 
can  scarcely  be  told  at  the  present  day  —  I  am  speak- 
ing of  freemen  —  who  is  of  the  English  and  who  of 
the  Norman  race."  Consequently  the  failure  to  bor- 
row words  from  the  French  can  hardly  be  imputed  to 
hostility  on  the  part  of  the  English.  The  explana- 
tion of  the  course  they  took  is  really  very  simple. 
They  did  not  employ  any  new  words  because  they 
did  not  need  them;  the  existing  stock  of  terms  was 
amply  sufficient  to  convey  all  the  knowledge  they 
sought  to  impart,  or  to  express  the  few  new  ideas  to 
which  they  gave  birth. 

At  any  rate,  the  fact  of  little  borrowing  cannot  be 
disputed.  The  "Brut"  of  Layamon  was  composed 
nearly  a  hundred  and  fifty  years  after  the  Conquest. 
It  is  a  poem  containing  thirty-two  thousand  short 
lines,  and  yet  there  are  in  it  hardly  a  hundred  words 
of  Norman-French  origin.  The  proportion  is  much 
less  in  the  "Ormulum,"  —  a  composition  of  about 
the  same  date,  and  containing  nearly  twenty  thou- 
sand short  lines.  During  the  century  that  followed, 
the  accessions  from  foreign  sources  are  neither  exten- 
sive nor  important.  Naturally,  the  number  of  French 
words  adopted  into  English  speech  became  more  and 
more  as  time  went  on;  and  at  every  period  since  its 
introduction  it  has  always  varied  with  the  nature  of 
the  subject-matter;  but,  down  to  the  end  of  the  thir- 
teenth century,  the  additions  that  had  come  from  this 


104  English  Language. 

quarter  to  the  native  speech  formed  only  a  very  small 
percentage  of  the  whole. 

It  was  in  the  last  half  century  of  the  Old  English 
period  —  that  is,  from  1300  to  1350  —  that  a  great 
change  took  place  in  this  respect.  It  was  during 
those  years  that  the  higher  classes  of  the  island  may 
be  said  to  have  generally  abandoned  the  French 
speech,  and  to  have  adopted  that  of  the  mass  of  the 
people.  This  could  hardly  have  happened  on  the 
rapid  and  extensive  scale  it  did,  had  not  the  English 
been  for  a  long  time  already  the  real  mother-tongue 
of  the  nobility  as  well  as  of  the  commonalty.  French 
was  indeed  the  language  which  the  former  class  had 
been  in  the  habit  of  using;  but  it  was  none  the  less 
a  foreign  tongue.  The  pressure  which  had  made  it 
a  necessity  for  every  one  to  learn  it,  had  been  steadily 
growing  more  and  more  irksome.  It  was  merely  a 
question  of  time  when  the  burden  would  be  thrown 
off  by  the  large  majority,  and  the  acquisition  of  the 
French  language  would  be  left  only  to  those  who  had 
special  reasons  for  becoming  acquainted  with  it. 
This  was  what  actually  took  place  at  the  period  in- 
dicated. 

It  was  natural  and  indeed  inevitable  that  the 
classes  which  had  been  in  the  habit  of  employing 
French,  should  bring  into  the  speech  they  had  adopted 
as  their  own,  many  of  the  words  with  which  they 
were  most  familiar.  Especially  would  this  be  true  of 
terms  descriptive  of  their  habits  and  customs  and 
ways  of  life,  or  expressive  of  thoughts  and  feelings 


Lexical  Changes  in  Old  English.        105 

peculiar  to  themselves.  For  many  of  these  the  native 
English  would  have  no  precise  equivalent.  Nor  if 
it  had,  would  the  terms  it  furnished  be  recommended 
by  their  associations.  Hence,  it  happened  that  dur- 
ing the  half-century  mentioned  a  vast  multitude  of 
words  came  from  the  French  into  the  English. 
What  had  been  left  of  the  grammatical  inflection  was 
Teutonic;  but  the  vocabulary  from  this  time  assumed 
that  mixed  character  which  has  ever  since  been  one 
of  its  marked  peculiarities.  Even  in  the  earliest 
writers  of  the  Middle  English  period,  the  foreign 
words  constitute  one-half  of  the  whole  number  they 
employ;  and  the  proportion  has  remained  essentially 
unchanged  from  that  time  to  the  present.  Such  a 
statement  is,  of  course,  based  upon  the  special  glos- 
sary of  an  author  in  which  a  word  that  occurs  but 
once  in  his  writings  counts  for  as  much  as  one  that 
is  used  by  him  a  thousand  times.  The  article  /he, 
for  illustration,  is  found  in  nearly  every  sentence  of 
Shakspeare;  but  in  estimating  his  whole  vocabulary, 
it  is  reckoned  for  no  more  than,  for  instance,  cousin- 
german  ox  fanatical,  either  one  of  which  appears 
only  once  in  all  his  writings.  On  the  other  hand,  in 
estimating  the  frequency  with  which  Teutonic  or 
Romance  words  are  used  in  any  particular  work  or 
passage,  there  has  never  been  a  period  in  which, 
or  a  writer  in  whom,  the  former  element  has  not 
vastly  exceeded  the  latter. 

This  large  accession  of  French  words  is  technically 
called  the  "Latin  of  the  Third   Period";  but  it  is 


106  English  Language. 

widely  different  in  character  from  any  accession  from 
that  quarter  the  speech  had  previously  received. 
Unlike  these,  it  entered  into  and  modified  the  whole 
framework  of  expression,  and  profoundly  influenced 
the  course  which  the  language  was  to  take  in  refer- 
ence to  future  additions  to  its  vocabulary.  Other 
Teutonic  tongues  may  make  use  of  Romance  words : 
the  English  must  make  use  of  them,  even  in  denounc- 
ing them.  This  is  an  essential  distinction,  which 
may  be  disregarded,  but  cannot  be  denied;  and  it 
had  its  origin  in  that  change  in  the  nature  of  the 
language  which  was  a  direct  result  of  the  vast  irrup- 
tion of  French  terms  in  the  fourteenth  century.  Has 
this  change  been  a  benefit,  or  an  injury?  This  ques- 
tion has  given  rise  to  much  controversy,  and  is,  from 
its  nature,  one  that  can  never  be  settled  to  the  satis- 
faction of  all.  In  this  place  it  is  only  important  to 
point  out  the  principal  losses  which  the  speech  suf- 
fered as  a  consequence  of  the  alteration  in  its 
character. 

Losses  of  Middle  English  as  compared  with  Anglo- 
Saxon.  —  The  first  of  these  was  the  loss  of  native 
words.  Language  is  always  economical,  and  is  not 
long  disposed  to  retain  terms  and  expressions  of 
which  it  has  no  real  need.  When,  therefore,  two 
different  words  —  the  one  of  Anglo-Saxon,  the  other 
of  French  origin,  but  both  meaning  precisely  the 
same  thing  —  came  to  exist  side  by  side,  one  of  two 
results  was  certain  to  happen  in  the  majority  of  in- 
stances.    First,  both  terms  would  be  retained,  and  a 


Loss  of  Formative  Affixes.  107 

distinction  would  be  made  in  their  signification. 
Secondly,  if  no  such  use  could  be  made  of  both,  or, 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  was  not  made,  one  of  them  was 
fairly  sure  to  be  dropped.  In  a  large  number  of 
cases  it  was  the  native  word  that  was  rejected,  in  the 
speech  of  the  fourteenth  century,  and  the  foreign  one 
that  was  retained.  It  is  probably  an  under  rather 
than  an  over  estimate  to  assert  that  more  than  one- 
half  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  vocabulary  has  been  lost 
to  Modern  English;  and  the  place  of  it  has  neces- 
sarily been  supplied,  whether  for  good  or  ill,  by  im- 
portations from  alien  sources. 

A  second  and  perhaps  more  serious  blow  to  the 
resources  of  the  language  was  the  loss  of  a  large  num- 
ber of  formative  prefixes  and  suffixes.  By  the  addi- 
tion of  the  former  of  these,  the  meaning  of  the  word 
is  modified.  By  the  addition  of  the  latter,  not  only  is 
the  meaning  modified,  but  the  word  itself  is  usually 
changed  from  one  part  of  speech  into  another.  In 
these  elements  the  original  speech  abounded.  It 
possessed,  in  consequence,  almost  unlimited  power 
in  the  creation  of  new  terms  from  native  roots.  Thus 
from  the  Anglo-Saxon  flowan,  'to  flow,'  ten  new 
compounds  were  formed  by  the  addition  of  various 
prefixes,  of  which  ten,  only  one,  oferflowan,  'to 
overflow,'  survives  with  us.  In  a  similar  manner, 
from  the  verb  sittan,  'to  sit,'  thirteen  new  verbs  were 
formed,  of  which  not  a  single  one  is  to  be  found  to- 
day. Even  in  some  instances  where  a  prefix  has 
been  retained  in  certain  words,  the  power  of  employ- 


io8  English  Language. 

ing  it  to  form  new  ones  has  been  given  up.  Thus 
zvith  is  still  found  in  withdraw,  withhold,  withstand, 
and  the  somewhat  archaic  withsay.  But  we  no 
longer  employ  it  to  form  new  words  by  prefixing  it 
to  other  verbs  than  these;  whereas,  originally,  it 
could  have  been  compounded  with  almost  any  verb, 
and  was  actually  compounded  with  about  thirty. 

Again,  the  Anglo-Saxon  was  comparatively  rich  in 
formative  suffixes.  Many  more  of  these  suffixes  have 
been  preserved  in  Modern  English  than  of  the  pre- 
fixes. Some,  indeed,  are  as  much  employed  now 
as  in  the  earliest  speech.  Among  those  still  com- 
monly used  to  form  new  nouns  are  -er  (A.  S.  -ere), 
as  in  do-er  from  the  verb  do  ;  -ing  (A.  S.  -nng,  -ing), 
as  in  learn-ing  from  the  verb  learn  ;  -ness  (A.  S.  -nes, 
-nis),  as  in  firm-ness  from  the  adjective  firm;  -hood 
( A.  S.  -had),  as  in  man-hood  from  the  noun  man  ;  and 
-ship  (A.  S.  -scipe),  as  in  friendship  from  the  noun 
friend.  Of  those  used  to  form  new  adjectives  the  ter- 
minations -fu/(A.  S.  -/////),  -ish  (A.  S.  -isc),  -less  (A.  S. 
-leas),  and  -y  (A.  S.  -ig)  are  among  the  most  common, 
and  can  be  exemplified  in  the  words  care-ful,  thiev- 
ish, redd-ish,  hope-less,  and  snow-y.  The  ending  -ly 
or  -like  (A.  S.  -lie)  is  also  constantly  used  still  to  form 
new  adjectives  or  adverbs,  especially  the  latter,  as 
may  be  seen  in  friend- ly,  god-like,  and  open-ly.  There 
are  others  such  as  -dom  (A.  S.  -dam)  and  -ed  (A.  S. 
-ede),  exemplified  in  king-dom,  and  horn-ed,  which 
likewise  continue  to  be  employed,  though  with  less 
frequency.     Furthermore,  the  use  of  some  of  these 


Loss  of  Formative  Affixes.  109 

terminations  has  been  extended  in  Modern  Eng- 
lish. In  Anglo-Saxon  -had,  the  present  -hood,  and 
-leas,  the  present  -less,  were  used  only  with  nouns  ; 
whereas  they  are  now  sometimes  added,  in  the  one 
case  to  adjectives,  as  in  false-hood,  and  in  the  other 
case  to  verbs,  as  in  daunt-less.  Still,  though  several 
of  these  endings  have  survived,  many  have  either 
passed  out  of  use  entirely,  or  are  no  longer  employed 
to  create  new  words. 

The  third  loss  was  in  the  power  of  forming  self- 
explaining  compounds.  In  this  respect  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  rivalled  the  modern  German.  Thus  carpenter 
could  with  them  be  expressed  by  treow-wyrhta,  'tree- 
wright,'  or  'worker  in  wood';  butcher,  by  flcesc- 
mangere,  'flesh-monger,'  or  'dealer  in  flesh  ';  library 
by  bochus,  'book-house.'  Hundreds  of  other  illustra- 
tions could  easily  be  given  of  the  facility  and  free- 
dom with  which  men  then  employed  the  power  of 
combining  familiar  words  to  form  new  ones.  Many 
of  these  compounds  went  out  of  use  early.  Others 
disappeared  in  the  fourteenth  century  in  consequence 
of  words  with  an  equivalent  meaning  having  been 
taken  from  the  French.  The  mere  loss  of  these  was 
not  in  itself  so  serious  a  detriment,  however,  as  the 
indisposition,  which  sprang  up  in  consequence,  to 
form  or  to  employ  self-explaining  compounds  when 
their  places  could  be  readily  supplied  by  borrowing. 

This  indisposition,  not  to  say  aversion,  can  be 
plainly  traced  in  the  history  of  the  language  from  the 
beginning  of  the  Middle  English  period  to  the  pres- 


1 1 0  En rlish  Lati ?ua ?e. 

ent  time.  Thus,  for  illustration,  the  Anglo-Saxon 
sunnan-stede  appears  later  as  sun-stead,  that  is,  the 
sun's  stopping  place;  and  was  used  to  denote  that 
part  of  the  ecliptic  in  which  the  sun  is  farthest  from 
the  equator.  In  lieu  of  this,  we  now  go  to  the  Latin 
solstitium,  formed  of  two  words  similar  in  meaning 
to  the  corresponding  English  ones,  and  from  it 
derive  the  term  solstice.  By  this  we  certainly  lose 
something  in  picturesqueness  and  force  of  expres- 
sion, though  we  may  possibly  gain  in  precision.  Or 
an  illustration  from  the  present  period  can  be  em- 
ployed. A  certain  liquid  substance  exuding  in  vari- 
ous ways  from  the  earth  needs  a  name.  Seen  oozing 
from  the  crevices  of  a  rock,  it  is  naturally  called 
rock-oil,  a  term,  to  all  appearance,  sufficiently  defi- 
nite to  distinguish  it  from  all  other  kinds  of  oil. 
Yet,  instead  of  using  this,  we  go  to  the  Latin  pctra, 
'rock,'  and  oleum,  'oil,'  and  rock  oil  appears  as 
petroleum, — a  word,  the  meaning  of  which  must  be 
learned  before  it  is  understood.  Processes  like  these 
are  constantly  going  on.  In  the  case  of  scientific 
words  they  may  be  considered  necessary;  for  it  is  of 
the  utmost  importance  that  a  technical  term  should 
convey  to  the  minds  of  all  one  idea,  and  but  one 
idea,  —  that  its  signification  should  be  imposed  upon 
it,  and  not  be  suggested  by  it.  This  power  of  form- 
ing self-explaining  compounds  can,  however,  hardly 
be  said  to  be  lost:  it  is  rather  a  power  held  in 
abeyance,  dwarfed  by  disuse,  but  by  no  means 
destroyed. 


Gams  made  by  English.  1 1 1 

These  changes  may  seem  to  have  seriously  impaired 
the  value  of  the  language.  To  a  certain  extent  it 
maybe  admitted  that  they  have  been  detrimental; 
but  they  have  been  far  less  so  than  they  appear.  It 
would,  indeed,  be  a  mistake  to  suppose  that  there 
have  not  been  great  gains  made,  as  well  as  great 
losses  suffered.  If  one  method  of  expression  is 
denied  language,  another  is  speedily  found  to  take 
its  place.  If  many  words  belonging  to  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  have  disappeared  from  the  tongue  now  spoken, 
their  places  have  been  more  than  supplied  by  impor- 
tations from  foreign  sources.  These  have  now  be- 
come so  thoroughly  identified  with  the  words  that 
have  come  from  the  original  speech,  that,  in  a  large 
number  of  cases,  no  one  but  the  special  student  is 
conscious  of  any  difference  in  their  origin.  In  par- 
ticular, the  introduction  of  the  Romance  element  in 
the  fourteenth  century  had  the  immediate  effect  of 
adding  to  the  language  a  large  number  of  terms  hav- 
ing precisely  the  same  meaning  as  those  already  ex- 
isting. In  many  instances  both  have  been  retained, 
and  a  difference  in  meaning  or  use  has  gradually  grown 
up.  The  readers  of  Scott's  novel  of  "Ivanhoe"  will 
recall  the  conversation  between  Wamba  the  fool  and 
Gurth  the  swineherd,  in  which  the  former  points  out 
that  sivine  and  ox  and  calf  go  by  their  English  names 
while  living,  but  when  served  up  as  food,  on  the  table 
of  the  Norman  noble,  become  pork  and  beef  and  veal. 
Here  is  a  clear  distinction  which  has  been  made  be- 
tween words  that  had  originally  the  same  sense. 


112  English  Language. 

The  same  process  has  gone  on  in  numerous  other 
cases,  and  is  still  continuing  to  go  on.  In  certain 
instances,  such  as  yearly  and  annual,  hearty  and 
cordial,  shire  and  county,  answer  and  reply,  buy  and 
purchase,  the  distinction  is  hardly  perceptible,  or 
at  least,  definable.  In  others,  like  body  and  corpse, 
ghost  and  spirit,  room  and  chamber,  ship  and  vessel, 
spring  and.  fountain,  it  is  either  clearly  recognizable 
already,  or  is  on  the  way  towards  becoming  plainly 
marked.  It  is  only  prejudice  or  ignorance  that  will 
deny  that  these  importations  have  added  immensely 
to  the  resources  of  the  language.  Especially  is  this 
true  of  its  capability  of  representing  delicate  shades 
of  thought,  and  the  higher  and  more  complex  rela- 
tions which  exist  between  the  conceptions  of  the 
mind.  In  this  respect  the  borrowed  words  stand  in 
decided  contrast  to  the  native  ones.  To  these  latter 
is  mainly  left  the  representation  of  all  deep  feeling. 
The  language  of  the  reasoning  faculties  is,  in  con- 
sequence, largely  different  with  us  from  the  language 
of  the  emotional  faculties,  with  the  advantage  to  the 
former,  that  it  gains  by  this  in  precision,  and  to  the 
latter,  that  it  gains  in  vividness  and  power. 

Equally,  the  places  of  the  lost  Anglo-Saxon  affixes 
have  been  supplied  by  affixes  that  have  been  bor- 
rowed from  other  languages,  particularly  the  French, 
the  Latin,  and  the  (Ireek.  These  have  been  intro- 
duced in  large  numbers,  and  are  freely  used  to  form 
new  words.  For  illustration,  such  prefixes  as  anti  in 
anti-climax,  dis  in  dls-possess,  inter  in  inter-mix,  non 


Capacity  of  Expression.  113 

in  non-essential,  sub  in  sub-acid,  super  in  super-natu- 
ral, trans  in  trans-Atlantic,  and  ultra  in  ultra-radi- 
cal can  be  applied  to  numerous  words.  The  same 
statement  is  true  of  suffixes  like  the  -al  of  nation-al, 
the  -able  of  eat-able,  the  -/V///  of  patriot-ism,  the  -w/ 
of  oigan-ist,  and  the  -/£<?  of  lion-ize.  There  are 
many  other  affixes  that  could  be  mentioned.  Further- 
more, the  giving  up  of  the  original  formative  endings 
has  been  largely  and  perhaps  wholly  counterbalanced 
in  Modern  English  by  the  facility  with  which  the 
simple  words  themselves  now  pass  from  one  part  of 
speech  to  another.  Thus  black  is  an  adjective;  but 
it  is  used  likewise  as  a  noun  and  a  verb.  Again, 
stone  is  a  noun;  but  it  is  also  a  verb,  and  may  be 
used  with  the  attributive  sense  of  an  adjective,  as,  for 
instance,  in  stone  house  and  stone  jar.  The  wide 
employment  of  the  substantive  in  the  manner  last 
designated,  which  forms  one  of  the  most  striking 
peculiarities  of  Modern  English,  far  more  than  off- 
sets any  loss  due  to  the  lack  of  facility  in  forming 
self-explaining  compounds. 

There  result,  indeed,  from  the  union  of  the  foreign 
and  native  elements,  a  wealth  of  phraseology  and  a 
many-sidedness  in  English,  which  give  it  in  these 
respects  a  superiority  over  any  other  modern  culti- 
vated tongue.  German  is  strictly  a  pure  Teutonic 
speech;  but  no  native  speaker  of  it  claims  for  it  any 
superiority  over  the  English  as  an  instrument  of  ex- 
pression, while  many  are  willing  to  concede  its  infe- 
riority.    At  any  rate,  the  character  of  the   language, 


1 14  English  Language. 

whether  for  good  or  ill,  was  fixed  for  all  succeeding 
time  at  the  beginning  of  the  Middle  English  period. 
We  may  grieve  over  it,  or  we  may  rejoice  over  it;  but 
we  cannot  change  it.  What  it  then  became  under 
the  hand  of  the  great  writers  who  moulded  it,  that 
it  has  since  continued  essentially  to  be,  and  that  it 
will  be  certain  to  remain  so  long  as  it  lasts,  in  its 
present  form,  as  a  spoken  and  written  tongue. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

THE  THREE   DIALECTS  OF   EARLY   ENGLISH,   AND 
THE   RISE   OF  THE   MIDLAND. 

It  has  already  been  remarked  that  the  dialect  in 
which  Chaucer  wrote  became  the  language  of  litera- 
ture, and  has  remained  as  such  until  this  day.  What 
was  this  dialect?  How  came  it  to  be  employed  by 
him?  What  was  its  relation  to  other  dialects,  or  to 
the  ancient  tongue  from  which,  in  a  certain  sense,  it 
may  be  said  to  have  descended?  The  answers  to 
these  questions  cannot  be  fully  understood  without 
having  clearly  in  mind  the  circumstances  under  which 
this  dialect  originated,  and  the  conditions  under  which 
it  came  to  the  front.  Here,  then,  is  a  favorable  point 
to  recapitulate  briefly  but  connectedly,  what  has  been 
said  elsewhere  at  length  but  in  scattered  passages. 

Of  the  various  dialects  existing  during  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  period,  that  is,  from  450  to  1150,  the  Wesi- 
Saxon  was  the  one  that  attained  to  literary  supremacy. 
Enough  exists  of  the  form  of  language  spoken  in  the 
ancient  kingdom  of  Northumbria  to  make  it  certain 
that  the  speech  of  the  North  of  England  varied  in 
many  respects  from  that  of  the  South.     But,  as  the 

"5 


1 \6  English  Language. 

West-Saxon  is  the  only  one  of  the  earliest  English  dia- 
lects that  can  be  said  to  have  both  maintained  and 
preserved  a  literature,  it  is  for  us  the  literary  Anglo- 
Saxon,  the  sole  remaining  type  of  our  tongue  in  its 
original  classical  form.  But  from  this  position  of  su- 
premacy the  Norman  Conquest  had  the  speedy  effect 
of  displacing  it.  After  that  event  its  special  forms 
and  inflections,  its  peculiarities  of  grammatical  con- 
struction, could  not  be  long  looked  upon  as  the  standard 
of  correct  writing  and  speaking.  Such  a  standard 
could  only  be  maintained  by  an  educated  class  ;  and 
the  attention  of  the  educated  classes  was  from  this 
time  turned  exclusively  either  to  Latin  or  to  French. 
The  West-Saxon,  as  an  inevitable  consequence,  sank 
to  the  level  of  the  other  dialects  :  it  had  no  longer 
any  special  pre-eminence  of  its  own.  Henceforward 
he  who  wrote  in  the  native  language  wrote  in  that 
form  of  it  with  which  he  was  most  familiar.  He  wrote 
in  the  dialect  of  the  district  of  country  in  which  he 
had  been  brought  up,  or  in  which  he  dwelt.  As, 
therefore,  nothing  existed  anywhere  that  could  be 
regarded  as  authority,  the  forces  that  tend  to  bring 
about  diversity  of  speech  were  sure  to  gain  strength 
more  rapidly  than  those  which  tend  to  bring  about 
uniformity. 

The  Three  Early  English  Dialects.  —  During  these 
centuries,  therefore,  —  the  twelfth,  the  thirteenth,  and 
the  fourteenth,  —  it  is  to  be  borne  in  mind  that  there 
was  in  no  sense  a  national  tongue.  There  existed  a 
number  of  dialects,  each  one  of  which  had  as  much 


Early  English  Dialects.  i\y 

right  as  any  of  the  others  to  be  called  the  English 
language.  The  points  of  similarity  were  naturally  far 
greater  in  number  and  in  importance  than  the  points 
of  dissimilarity.  In  spite  of  that,  the  latter  were  suffi- 
cient to  make  the  variations  between  these  dialects 
observable  by  all.  Especially  marked  was  the  differ- 
ence between  the  speech  of  the  North  and  that  of  the 
South  of  England.  This  at  once  came  to  the  surface 
as  soon  as  the  pressure  was  withdrawn  that  had  brought 
all  the  previously  existing  dialects  under  the  supremacy 
of  the  West-Saxon. 

This  particular  difference  had  existed  from  the 
earliest  period ;  but  it  only  became  prominent  when 
all  dialects  were  brought  to  a  common  level  of  com- 
parison by  sharing  in  a  common  degradation.  But 
little  more  than  half  a  century  had  passed  after  the 
Conquest,  when  the  chronicler,  William  of  Malmesbury 
(1095-1148),  asserted  that  the  speech  of  the  Nor- 
thumbrians, especially  at  York,  sounded  so  rude  and 
harsh  to  the  men  of  the  South,  that  the  latter  were 
scarcely  able  to  understand  it.  Similar  testimony  to 
this  divergence  is  borne  by  Giraldus  Cambrensis,  a 
scholar  who  flourished  not  much  later.  About  1194 
he  finished  a  work  in  Latin,  giving  an  account  of 
Wales.  In  the  course  of  it  he  incidentally  pointed 
out  a  fact  which  is  now  universally  recognized  as  true. 
He  remarked  that  the  language  of  Southern  England 
was  more  ancient  in  its  character  than  that  of  the 
northern  parts,  and  much  closer  to  the  original  tongue 
as  preserved  in  writing. 


1 1 8  English  Language. 

Upon  this  point  we  have  again  precise  and  positive 
testimony  from  Higden,  the  writer  of  the  first  half  of 
the  fourteenth  century  who  has  already  been  quoted 
on  this  question  of  language.  He  asserted  distinctly 
the  existence  of  three  leading  dialects  in  his  time. 
These  are  his  statements,  as  translated  by  Trevisa :  — 

"  Also  Englysch  men,  bey3  hy  hadde  fram  \>e  bygynnyng 
J>re  maner  speche,  Souberon,  NorJ>eron,  and  Myddel  speche 
(in  he  myddel  of  J>e  lond),  as  hy  come  of  bre  maner  people 
of  Germania;  noseless,  by  commyxstion  and  mellyng,  furst 
wib  Danes  and  afterward  wib  Normans,  in  menye  be  contray 
longage  ys  apeyred,  and  some  vseb  strange  wlaffyng,  chyteryng, 
harryng  and  garryng,  grisbittyng.  [By  these  five  words  Trevisa 
translates  the  Latin  boatus  et  garritus']  .  .  .  Also,  of  be  for- 
seyde  Saxon  tonge  bat  ys  deled  a  bre,  and  ys  abyde  scars- 
lych  with  feaw  vplondysch  men,  and  ys  gret  wondur;  for  men 
of  be  est  wib  men  of  be  west,  as  hyt  were  vndur  be  same 
party  of  heuene,  acordeb  more  in  sounyng  of  speche  ban  men 
uf  the  nor))  wib  men  of  the  soub;  berfore  hyt  ys  bat  Mercij, 
I  at  bub  men  of  Myddel  Engelond,  as  hyt  were  parteners  of 
be  endes,  vndurstondeb  betre  be  syde  longages,  Norberon  and 
Souberon,  than  Norberon  and  Souberon  vndurstondeb  eyber 
ober.':  l 

1  "  Also  Englishmen,  though  they  had  from  the  beginning  three 
kinds  of  speech,  Southern,  Northern,  and  Midland  speech  (in  the 
middle  of  the  land),  as  they  came  from  three  kinds  of  people  of 
Germany,  nevertheless,  by  mixing  and  mingling,  first  with  Danes 
and  afterward  with  Normans,  in  many  the  native  language  is  cor- 
rupted, and  some  use  strange  babbling,  chattering,  growling  and 
snarling,  teeth-grinding  .  .  .  Also,  in  regard  to  the  aforesaid  Saxon 
tongue,  that  is  divided  into  three,  and  has  remained  [in  use]  with 
[a]  few  country-men,  there  is  great  wonder;  for  men  of  the  East 
with  men  of  the  West,  as  it  were  under  the  same  portion  of  heaven, 
agree  more  in  the  sound  of  [their]  speech  than  men  of  the  North 
with  men  of  the  South;  therefore  it  is  that  the  Mercians,  that  are 


Early  English  Dialects.  1 1 9 

The  extant  writings  of  this  period  bear  ample 
witness  to  the  truth  of  Higden's  statement.  There 
were,  especially  during  the  thirteenth  and  fourteenth 
centuries,  and  even  earlier,  three  great  divisions  of 
English  speech.  The  differences  between  these  were 
so  pronounced,  that  the  dwelling-place  of  a  man  within 
certain  limits  could  be  immediately  told  by  his  lan- 
guage. The  distinction  is  traceable  now  without  diffi- 
culty in  the  works  that  have  been  handed  down.  It 
was  as  fully  recognized  then.  Chaucer,  for  illustration, 
wrote  in  the  Midland  dialect  of  the  eastern  counties, 
and  exemplified  regularly  in  his  writings  all  its  peculiar 
grammatical  characteristics.  For  instance,  he  forms 
the  third  person  singular  of  the  present  tense  of  the 
verb  in  -///,  the  plural  in  -en  or  -e.  Consequently  he 
would  say,  for  example,  he  loveth  and  they  loven  or 
they  love.  But  in  "The  Reeve's  Tale  "  he  introduces 
two  characters  who  are  described  as  coming  from  a 
town  "  far  in  the  North  "  ;  and  the  special  peculiarities 
of  that  dialect  are  designedly  represented  in  the  forms 
they  use.  In  the  language  put  into  their  mouths  the 
third  person  singular  of  the  present  tense  ends  in  -s, 
as  generally  in  Modern  English  :  the  plural  has  like- 
wise the  same  termination.  Other  characteristics  of 
the  speech  of  the  North  occur  such  as  the  use  of  a  for 
0,  as  in  ga,  haui(c),  hahl,  nat,  sang;  of  ///  for  to; 
and  of  sal  for  slial.     Specifically,  also,  a  variety  of  the 

men  of  Middle  England,  as  it  were  partners  of  the  ends,  understand 
better  the  border  languages,  Northern  and  Southern,  than  Northern 
or  Southern  understands  each  one  the  other," 


120  English  Language. 

Northern  dialect  is  exemplified,  in  which  is  is  found 
in  the  first  and  second  persons  of  the  present  tense  of 
the  substantive  verb.  The  following  lines  show  speci- 
mens of  all  these  peculiarities  :  — 

Oure  manciple,1  I  hope,2  he  will  be  deed,3 
Svva4  werkes  ay  the  wanges5  in  his  heed; 
And  forthy0  is  I  come,  and  eek  Alayn, 
To  grynde  oure  corn,  and  carie  it  ham  agayn. 

Yit  saugh  I  nevere,  by  my  fader  kyn, 
How  that  the  hopur  wagges  til  and  fra. 

I  is  as  ill  a  miller  as  are  ye. 

I  have  herd  seyd,  '  Man  sal  taa '  of  twa  thynges, 
Slyk  8  as  he  fyndes,  or  taa 7  slyk  8  as  he  brynges.' 

No  student  of  the  earlier  form  of  our  language 
would  think  of  attributing  these  lines  to  any  other 
dialect  than  that  of  the  North.  Their  introduction  into 
a  tale  written  in  the  Midland  speech  shows  that  the 
distinctive  peculiarities  of  each  were  fully  understood 
then.  The  divergence,  indeed,  was  not  only  generally 
recognized,  it  was  also  so  deeply  marked,  that  it  may 
almost*  be  said  that  works  composed  in  either  of  the 
two  extreme  dialects  required  to  be  translated  into  the 
other  in  order  to  be  understood.  A  well-known  early 
English  poem,  the  "  Cursor  Mundi,"  was  written  about 
the  end  of  the  thirteenth  century  in  the  language  of 
the  North.     One  story  in  it  was  taken,  however,  from 

L  Purveyor.  2  Expect.  3  Be  deed  =  die. 

4  So.  5  Cheek-teeth.  G  Therefore, 

•   Take.  »  Such. 


Early  English  Dialects.  1 2 1 

a  work  composed  in  the  dialect  of  the  South  ;  and  the 
author  of  the  "  Cursor  Mundi "  speaks  of  the  latter 
speech  in  words  which  would  almost  lead  one  to  think 
that  he  looked  upon  it  as  a  foreign  tongue  ;  for,  after 
mentioning  his  authority,  he  goes  on  to  say  ;  — 

"  In  a  writt  this  ilke  I  fand, 
Himself  it  wroght  I  understand. 
In  Suthrin  Englijs  was  it  draun, 
And  I  haue  turned  it  till  vr  aun 
Langage  of  the  northren  lede, 
That  can  nan  other  Englis  rede."  l 

Lines  20059-64. 

Geographical  Limits  of  the  Three  Dialects.  —  The 

geographical  limits  of  these  divisions  of  English 
speech  may  be  roughly  stated  as  follows:  1.  The 
Northern  dialect,  as  the  lineal  descendant  of  the 
Northumbrian  dialect  of  Anglo-Saxon,  covered  about 
the  same  extent  of  territory ;  that  is,  the  region 
stretching  from  the  Humber  on  the  south  to  the 
Frith  of  Forth  on  the  north,  and  bounded  by  the 
Pennine  Mountains  on  the  west.  It  consequently 
included  the  present  counties  of  York,  Durham,  and 
Northumberland  in  England,  and  the  Lowlands  of 
Scotland,  except  in  the  south-west.     During  the  four- 

1  "  In  a  writing  this  same  [tiling]  I  found; 
He  himself  composed  it,  I  understand. 
In  Southern  English  was  it  composed, 
And  I  have  turned  it  to  our  own 
Language  of  the  northern  people, 
That  can  read  no  other  English." 


122  English  Language. 

teenth  and  fifteenth  centuries,  and  later,  it  was,  how- 
ever, making  its  way  throughout  the  whole  of  Scot- 
land, and  slowly  supplanting  the  native  Celtic  tongue, 
though  it  never  succeeded  in  doing  this  completely. 
Still,  at  a  comparatively  early  period,  it  had  advanced 
far  to  the  north  along  the  eastern  coast.  The  only 
one  of  the  various  sub-dialects  of  the  Northern  dialect, 
that  became  a  literary  speech,  was  the  Lowland  Scotch. 
But  after  the  union,  in  1603,  of  Scotland  and  England 
under  a  common  king,  that  itself  sank  to  the  position 
of  a  dialect  of  standard  English. 

2.  The  Midland  dialect  occupied  the  central  coun- 
ties from  the  Humber  to  the  Thames,  and  the  district 
west  of  the  Pennine  range  of  hills.  It  was  doubtless 
the  descendant  of  the  Mercian  of  the  Anglo-Saxon 
period  which  covered  substantially  the  same  territory. 
From  the  outset  it  was  divided  into  two  distinct  vari- 
eties, called  respectively  from  the  regions  of  country 
wherein  they  were  spoken,  the  East  Midland  and  the 
West  Midland.  Of  these,  the  former  stretched  over  a 
much  larger  district,  and  was  altogether  more  impor- 
tant both  for  its  linguistic  influence  and  for  the  char- 
acter of  the  literature  that  was  written  in  it. 

3.  The  Southern  stretched  from  the  Thames  to  the 
English  Channel.  It  also  extended  to  portions  of  the 
western  counties  north  of  the  Thames,  particularly 
Gloucestershire,  Herefordshire,  and  Worcestershire. 
It  was  a  direct  descendant  of  the  West- Saxon,  the 
classical  language  of  our  fathers,  though  it  occasionally 
exhibits  forms  for  which  there  is  nothing  correspond- 


Early  Engl  is  Ji  Dialects.  123 

ing  to  be  found  in  the  monuments  that  have  been  pre- 
served of  the  earliest  speech.  Kentish  may  have  been 
originally  very  different ;  but  as  we  find  it  in  the  Old 
English  period,  it  is  only  a  strongly  marked  variety 
of  the  Southern  dialect. 

It  is  not  to  be  understood,  indeed,  that  there  were 
not  variations,  and  great  variations,  everywhere  within 
these  lines.  As  there  was  then  no  uniform  standard 
English,  so  there  was  no  uniform  Northern,  or  Mid- 
land, or  Southern  dialect.  Under  each  one  of  these 
was  included  a  number  of  sub-dialects,  with  special 
peculiarities  of  their  own,  and  often  confined  to  com- 
paratively small  districts.  Thus  the  /  is  and  the  thou 
is,  given  above  in  Chaucer's  representation  of  the 
Northern  dialect,  would  be  a  grammatical  form  true 
of  only  a  portion  of  the  region  covered  by  that  partic- 
ular kind  of  English.  It  would  be  very  far  from  being 
true  of  all  of  it,  and  probably  of  most  of  it.  All, 
therefore,  that  is  meant  to  be  implied  is  that  within 
these  three  great  divisions  the  differences  were  slight 
compared  with  the  resemblances. 

It  was  the  language  of  the  North  and  that  of  the 
South,  as  is  stated  by  Higden,  that  stood  the  farthest 
apart.  Between  these  two  wavered  the  dialect  of  the 
Midland  counties  ;  sometimes  and  in  some  places  in- 
clining to  the  one,  at  other  times  and  in  other  places 
inclining  to  the  other.  Each  one  of  the  three  called 
itself  the  English  speech,  but  did  not  deny  the  title 
to  the  others.  Each  one  of  the  three  also  acted  upon 
the   speech   of   that   other   with   which    it   came   into 


124  English  Language 

immediate  contact.  Thus  the  East  Midland  affected 
the  dialect  of  the  South,  and  the  Southern  in  turn 
affected  the  East  Midland.  For  instance,  the  South- 
ern plural  ending  in  -///  of  the  present  tense  —  as  they 
hopeth  —  made  its  appearance  in  works  written  in  the 
Eastern  Midland.  Again,  the  Northern  termination 
in  -s  of  the  second  and  third  person  singular  of 
the  present  tense  is  often  found  in  the  West  Mid- 
land. Accordingly  we  should  have,  for  illustration,  in 
this  speech,  thou  gives  and  he  gives  in  place  of  the 
Eastern  Midland  and  Southern  thou  givest  and  he 
giveth. 

But  one  important  thing  these  dialects  had  in  com- 
mon. The  influx  of  French  words  into  their  vocabu- 
lary was  about  the  same  in  each,  and  occurred  at 
about  the  same  period.  On  whatever  other  points 
they  differed,  here  they  agreed.  The  Norman  Con- 
quest did  not  bring  Scotland  under  the  sway  of  a  for- 
eign race,  nor  were  the  Scottish  Lowlands  parcelled 
out  among  a  body  of  nobles  who  spoke  a  strange 
tongue ;  yet  French  words  penetrated  at  about  the 
same  time,  and  to  about  the  same  extent,  not  only 
into  the  English  spoken  on  both  sides  of  the  Humber, 
which  divided  the  Northern  dialect  from  the  Midland, 
but  also  into  the  English  spoken  on  both  sides  of  the 
Tweed,  which  divided  the  two  kingdoms.  In  the 
fourteenth  century  the  language  of  Barbour,  the  Arch- 
deacon of  Aberdeen,  shows  as  much  the  trace  of 
French  influence  as  does  that  of  his  contemporary 
Chaucer,  the  controller  of  the  port  of  London.     The 


Differences  between  the  Dialects.         125 

introduction  into  our  tongue  of  the  Romance  element 
was  in  no  sense  peculiar  to  the  speech  of  any  one 
dialect  or  any  one  district  of  country ;  it  was  a  gen- 
eral linguistic  movement,  which  extended  to  every 
place  where  English  was  spoken  at  all. 

Differences  between  the  Dialects.  —  It  is  obviously 
the  differences  between  the  two  extreme  dialects  that 
are  most  marked,  and  to  these  the  attention  will  be 
mainly  directed.  There  was,  in  the  first  place,  one 
great  radical  distinction  between  the  speech  of  the 
North  and  of  the  South.  The  latter  was  extremely 
conservative  in  holding  on  to  its  grammatical  inflec- 
tions ;  the  former  let  them  go  rapidly.  In  the  general 
break-up  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  that  followed  the  Con- 
quest, it  was  impossible  to  preserve  the  speech  of  any 
portion  of  the  country  from  violent  changes  and  cor- 
ruptions and  losses.  These  effects  showed  themselves 
in  the  Southern  dialect,  but  much  less  there  than  in 
either  of  the  two  others.  It  clung  as  firmly  as  it  well 
could  to  the  original  forms  and  inflections ;  and 
whatever  it  gave  up,  it  gave  up  reluctantly.  For 
evidence  of  this,  we  have  a  succession  of  literary 
monuments,  which  establish  the  slowness  of  the  change 
that  took  place. 

We  have  no  such  means  for  tracing  the  linguistic 
history  of  the  North  as  we  have  that  of  the  South  ; 
for,  from  about  the  end  of  the  tenth  century  to  the 
end  of  the  thirteenth,  no  works  were  written  in  the 
language  spoken  in  or  descended  from  that  spoken 
in  the  ancient  Northumbria  :  or,  if  written,  they  have 


126  English  Language. 

not  been  preserved.  But  it  is  evident  that  the  devel- 
opment of  the  Northern  dialect  was  in  the  sharpest 
contrast  to  that  of  the  Southern.  It  abandoned  its 
inflections  without  hesitation.  The  works  produced  in 
it  in  the  fourteenth  century  show,  that,  in  its  rejection 
of  grammatical  forms,  it  had  even  then  frequently  gone 
farther  than  the  English  we  use  has  now,  or,  at  any 
rate,  had  shown  a  disposition  to  go  farther.  One  or 
two  illustrations  are  all  that  will  be  needed  at  this  point. 
The  ending  -s  of  the  genitive  is  sometimes  dropped  : 
man  saul  appears  for  '  man's  soul.'  So  is  sometimes 
the  ending  -s  of  the  third  person  singular  of  the  pres- 
ent, and  the  -ed  of  the  preterite,  seen  in  such  expres- 
sions as  he  think,  '  he  thinks,'  and  in  he  cumand,  '  he 
commanded.'  In  fact,  in  the  fourteenth  century  the 
Northern  dialect  had  moved  so  far  to  the  form  now 
exhibited  by  Modern  English,  that  a  work  written  at 
that  time,  if  printed  in  the  existing  orthography,  would 
present  but  few  and  slight  difficulties  to  the  ordinary 
reader,  so  far  as  inflections  and  grammatical  construc- 
tions are  concerned. 

It  was  in  respect  to  slowness  or  swiftness  of  change 
that  the  great  characteristic  difference  manifested  itself 
between  the  speech  of  the  North  and  of  the  South. 
In  some  cases  as  a  result  of  this,  in  others  entirely 
independent  of  it,  the  two  dialects  showed  marked 
divergencies.  These  concern  partly  the  spelling,  partly 
the  vocabulary,  and  partly  the  grammar.  A  few  illus- 
trations will  be  given  to  make  this  statement  perfectly 
clear ;  those  peculiarities  being  chosen  by  preference 


Differences  between  the  Dialects.        127 

which  have  maintained  themselves  in  Modern  Eng- 
lish, either  in  the  standard  speech  or  in  the  Scottish 
dialect. 

First,  as  regards  difference  of  orthography.  The 
Southern  dialect  used  the  vowel  o,  where  the  North 
preferred  a.  Thus  in  Early  English,  land  and  lond, 
hom{e)  and  ham(e),  would  indicate  the  two  regions 
where  these  particular  forms  prevailed.  We  see  this 
further  exemplified  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  pronoun  hwa, 
which  in  the  South  became  who,  and  in  the  North 
wha.  Again,  the  Southern  dialect  was  inclined  to  use 
the  letter  v  for  /,  a  tendency  which  was  unknown  to 
the  North;  thus  the  Anglo-Saxon  fox,  a  'fox,'  and 
fixe/?,  a  '  female  fox,'  became  in  the  Southern  dialect 
vox  and  vixen  ;  and  Modern  English  has  retained  the 
original  form  of  the  one,  and  the  altered  form  of  the 
other.  Furthermore,  the  South  was  apt  to  turn  the 
Anglo-Saxon  c  into  eh,  especially  before  the  vowels  e, 
i,  and  y,  and  at  the  end  of  a  syllable  ;  whereas  this 
letter  was  represented  in  the  North  by  k.  Accord- 
ingly, the  Anglo-Saxon  eiree,  '  church,'  became  in  the 
Southern  dialect  ehirehe,  in  the  Northern  kirk,  still 
preserved  in  the  Scottish  dialect.  Another  illustration 
will  be  found  in  the  case  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  verb 
seean,  '  to  seek.'  This  appeared  respectively  in  the 
speech  of  the  two  regions  as  seche(n)  and  seke(n). 
In  the  simple  verb  we  now  use  the  Northern  form 
seek,  but  in  the  compound  beseech  we  follow  the  South. 

Secondly,  as  regards  difference  of  vocabulary.  The 
Northern    dialect   adopted    a   number   of    Scandina- 


128  English  Language 

vian  words,  brought  in  by  the  invasion  and  settle- 
ment of  the  Norsemen.  Comparatively  few  of  these 
found  their  way  into  the  South  ;  though  some  of  them 
were  adopted  into  the  speech  of  the  Midland  dialects, 
especially  in  those  counties  which  had  fallen  under 
the  sway  of  the  Danes.  Into  these  latter,  indeed, 
they  may  have  been  introduced  independently,  and 
from  this  source  have  been  transmitted  to  Modern 
English.  In  this  way  we  can  explain  the  early  and 
wide  use  of  such  Norse  words  as  ill,  bound,  'ready, 
destined  for,'  and  fro  in  phrases  such  as  '  to  and 
fro.'  The  Northern  local  dialects  naturally  retain 
these  Scandinavian  words  in  somewhat  large  num- 
bers ;  as,  for  one  instance  that  will  do  for  many,  the 
word  gar,  '  to  cause,'  may  be  adduced.  This  comes 
directly  from  the  Norse  verb  g'ora. 

Thirdly,  as  regards  grammatical  differences.  In  this 
respect  the  general  tendency,  already  mentioned,  of 
the  North  to  drop  inflections  altogether,  and  of  the 
South  to  retain  them  as  long  as  possible,  formed  nat- 
urally the  great  cardinal  distinction  between  the  two 
dialects.  But  besides  this  there  are  certain  character- 
istic differences  in  the  inflection  itself.  One  of  the 
most  marked  is  in  the  plural  of  the  present  tense  of 
the  verb.  In  the  Northern  dialect  this  either  ended 
in  -s,  or  dropped  the  termination  entirely.  In  the 
Southern  the  regular  ending  was  -///.  In  this  matter 
the  former  followed  the  Northumbrian  dialect  of 
Anglo-Saxon,  the  Litter  the  West-Saxon.  Men  say 
would  therefore  be  represented  respectively  by  men 


Differences  between  the  Dialects.  129 

says  and  men  sayeth)  These  peculiarities  lasted  down 
in  the  literary  language  to  a  comparatively  late  period, 
though  ordinarily  not  indicated  in  modern  editions,  as 
the  text  is,  in  this  particular,  silently  changed  when- 
ever possible.  The  usage  can  be  seen  in  the  following 
illustrations  :  — 

O  father  Abraham,  what  these  Christians  are 
Whose  own  hard  dealings  teaches  them  suspect 
The  thoughts  of  others  ! 

Shakspeare,  Merchant  of  Venice,  act  i.  scene  3. 

A  board  groaning  under  the  heavy  burden  of  the  beasts  that 
cheweth  the  cud.  —  Fletcher,  Woman-Hater,  act  i.  scene  2. 

Another  marked  grammatical  difference  was  in  the 
plural  of  the  noun.  In  Old  English,  -s  had  become 
the  regular  termination  of  this  number  for  all  the  dia- 
lects. But  the  Southern  still  continued  to  retain  many 
plurals  in  -en.  This  form  was  based  upon  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  plural  in  -an,2  which  originally  belonged  to 
about  half  the  nouns  in  the  language,  but  exhibits  in 
our  present  prose  speech  but  one  genuine  survival  in 
oxen.  This  termination,  however,'  was  sometimes 
added  in  the  Southern  dialect  to  many  nouns  which 
etymologically  had  no  right  to  it.  From  it  in  conse- 
quence we  have  Modern  English  plurals  like  brethren 
and  children,  (A.  S.  broSru  and  cilJru),  which  in  a 
strict  sense  were  at  the  outset  corruptions.  The  not 
uncommon  dialectic  form  housen  is  another  illustra- 
tion of  the  fondness  for  this  ending ;  in  Anglo-Saxon 

1  See  Part  II.,  sec.  331.  -  lb.,  sees.  27  and  57. 


130  English  Language. 

the  plural  is  the  same  as  the  singular.  This  termina- 
tion in  -en  was,  in  truth,  sometimes  given  in  the 
Southern  dialect  to  nouns  ending  originally  in  -as,  of 
which  the  representative  was  strictly  -es.  For  example, 
we  sometimes  find  kingen  instead  of  the  regular  kinges, 
1  kings.'  On  the  other  hand,  the  Northern  dialect 
had  scarcely  any  plurals  in  -en.  In  fact,  the  number 
ordinarily  found  in  it  comprised  only  the  four  words, 
eghen,  '  eyes,'  hosen,  '  hose,'  shoon,  '  shoes,'  and 
oxen. 

Between  these  two  dialects  stood  that  of  the  Mid- 
land counties,  not  merely  in  respect  to  position,  but  in 
respect  to  language  also.  It  partook,  to  a  large 
extent,  of  the  peculiarities  of  each  ;  while  in  some 
particulars  it  was  independent  of  both.  Many  ques- 
tions connected  with  its  origin  and  development  will 
remain  unsettled,  because  some  of  its  distinguishing 
characteristics  must  have  come  from  a  dialect  or 
dialects*existing  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  period,  which, 
however  widely  employed  in  colloquial  speech,  left 
no  trace  of  itself  or  of  themselves  in  written  literature. 
Moreover,  while  it  had  from  the  very  beginning  an 
independent  existence  and  growth,  it  could  not  fail  to 
be  affected  largely  by  the  two  dialects  on  each  side  of 
it. 

Thus,  as  we  have  seen,  in  the  fourteenth  century 
three  >great  dialects  existed  in  Britain,  each  calling 
itself  English,  each  possessing  a  literature  of  its  own, 
and  each  seemingly  having  about  the  same  chance  to 
be  adopted  as  the^  representative  national  tongue.     Of 


Differences  between  the  Dialects.        1 3  I 

these  three  it  was  the  Midland  that  became  the  lan- 
guage of  literature,  —  the  language  we  speak  and  write 
to-day.  Its  supremacy  has  involved,  as  one  result, 
the  degradation  of  the  other  two,  with  all  their  va- 
rieties, to  the  condition,  in  general,  of  local  dialects, 
maintaining  themselves  as  the  speech  of  the  rude  and 
uneducated  only,  and  destined,  with  the  greater  spread 
of  education,  to  ultimate  extinction.  The  question 
naturally  arises,  How  did  this  result  come  about? 

There  were  several  circumstances  that  concurred 
to  give  predominance  to  the  Midland  dialect.  In  the 
first  place,  it  was  in  its  nature  a  compromise  between 
the  two  found  on  each  side  of  it,  and  could,  therefore, 
be  much  more  readily  adopted  by  both  than  could 
either  by  the  other.  We  have  already  had  a  direct 
statement  to  this  effect  by  a  writer  of  the  fourteenth 
century.1  In  the  second  place,  it  covered  a  larger 
extent  of  territory  than  either  of  the  others.  In  par- 
ticular, the  strength  of  the  Northern  dialect  as  a  rival 
was  much  weakened  by  the  fact  that  no  small  portion 
of  the  region  in  which  it  was  spoken  had  from  an 
early  period  been  separated  from  England,  and  been 
placed  under  the  rule  of  the  king  of  the  Scots.  In  the 
third  place,  the  Midland  was  the  speech  of  the  district 
in  which  the  two  universities  of  Oxford  and  Cambridge 
were  situated.  Accordingly,  all  the  powerful  linguistic 
influences  that  flowed  from  these  two  great  centres  of 
higher  education  were  constantly  at  work  to  extend 
the  supremacy  of  the   form  of  speech  heard  in  them. 

1  See  page  118.  # 


132  English  Language. 

In  the  fourth  place,  it  was  the  Midland  that  became 
the  tongue  mainly  employed  at  the  court  and  the 
capital,  as  the  French  was  gradually  displaced  from 
its  position  as  the  language  of  social  intercourse. 
This  last  was  an  influence,  which,  powerful  as  it  is  at 
any  period,  was  far  more  powerful  then  than  it  is 
almost  possible  for  us  now  to  conceive. 

All  of  these  reasons  contributed  to  give  the  Midland 
special  prominence  as  the  dialect  destined  to  become 
the  representative  one  of  the  whole  nation.  Yet, 
strong  as  these  various  agencies  were  in  themselves, 
they  were  insufficient  to  establish  its  supremacy  over 
the  rest,  and  cause  them  to  sink  into  subordinate  posi- 
tions, of  which  not  only  others  would  be  conscious, 
but  which  would  be  acknowledged  as  such  by  them- 
selves. No  really  national  language  could  exist  until 
a  literature  had  been  created  which  would  be  admired 
and  studied  by  all  who  could  read,  and  taken  as  a 
model  by  all  who  could  write.  It  was  only  a  man  of 
genius  that  could  lift  up  one  of  these  dialects  into  a 
pre-eminence  over  the  rest,  or  could  ever  give  to  the 
scattered  forces  existing  in  any  one  of  them  the  unity 
and  vigor  of  life.  This  was  the  work  that  Chaucer 
did.  He  it  was  that  first  showed  to  all  men  the  re- 
sources of  the  language,  its  capacity  of  representing 
with  discrimination  all  shades  of  human  thought,  and 
of  conveying  with  power  all  manifestations  of  human 
feeling.  His  choice  of  the  Midland,  or  rather  the 
fact  of  his  writing  in  it,  raised  it  at  once  into  a  position 
of  superiority  which  was   never  afterwards  disputed. 


Differences  between  the  Dialects.         133 

His  productions,  scattered  everywhere,  unconsciously 
affected  the  speech  of  all  who  read,  and  were  con- 
sciously looked  upon  by  all  who  set  out  to  write  as 
the  authoritative  standard  of  expression.  The  words 
and  grammatical  forms  he  used,  the  methods  of  syntac- 
tical construction  he  followed,  became  the  ones  gen- 
erally adopted  by  his  successors.  With  him,  indeed, 
began  the  exercise  of  that  great  conservative  restraint 
which  literature  throws  about  language,  which  arrests 
all  sudden  changes,  and  which,  so  long  as  it  operates 
unimpaired,  renders  revolution  or  anarchy  in  the  speech 
an  impossibility. 

It  has  already  been  stated  that  the  Midland  dialect 
was  not  altogether  uniform  ;  and  that  it  has  been 
divided  into  that  of  the  Eastern  and  of  the  Western 
counties.  It  was  in  the  former  of  these  that  Chaucer 
wrote.  To  speak  with  absolute  precision,  it  is  there- 
fore to  be  said  that  the  cultivated  English  language, 
in  which  nearly  all  English  literature  of  value  has  been 
written,  sprang  directly  from  the  East  Midland  division 
of  the  Midland  dialect,  and  especially  from  that  variety 
of  the  East  Midland  which  was  spoken  at  London  and 
the  region  immediately  to  the  north  of  it.  To  that  it 
owes  the  forms  of  its  words  and  its  leading  grammati- 
cal characteristics,  though  in  these  respects  it  has 
likewise  been  influenced  in  particulars  by  the  speech 
both  of  the  North  and  of  the  South. 

The  Scotch  Dialect.  —  But,  while  these  three  dialects 
were  in  use  in  England,  it  was  the  Northern  alone  that 
was  spoken  in  Scotland ;   and,  as  the  Scotch  is  the 


134  English  Language. 

only  dialect  of  English  that  can  be  said  to  have  a  liter- 
ature of  its  own,  a  brief  account  of  it  is  here  in  place. 
This  Northern  dialect  had  in  that  region  gradually 
spread  itself  on  every  side  from  its  original  centre  in 
the  south,  had  crossed  the  Forth,  and,  steadily  pressing 
back  the  Celtic  tongues,  had,  in  the  fourteenth  cen- 
tury made  its  way  along  the  coast  as  far  as  the  Moray 
Frith.  Even  had  the  speech  of  England  and  Scotland 
been  precisely  the  same  in  the  beginning,  the  political 
separation  of  the  two  countries,  at  a  period  when  no 
literary  standard  existed  anywhere,  would  of  itself 
have  been  almost  certain  to  develop,  in  process  of 
time,  differences  between  the  tongues  used  in  both. 
This  inevitable  divergence  was  largely  increased  by 
the  fact  that  in  the  one  country  the  Midland  dialect 
established  its  supremacy  and  became  the  language  of 
literature,  while  in  the  other,  the  Northern  dialect  was 
the  only  one  ever  employed  at  all,  either  in  the  lan- 
guage of  literature  or  of  common  life.  Accordingly, 
the  speech  of  Scotland  had  a  linguistic  development 
in  some  measure  independent  of  that  found  south  of 
the  Tweed. 

It  is  to  be  borne  in  mind,  however,  that  Scotch,  as 
an  epithet  applied  to  speech,  meant  originally  the 
Gaelic  of  the  Celtic  inhabitants  of  Northern  Britain. 
Its  modern  sense,  as  applied  to  one  dialect  of  our  lan- 
guage, was  then  not  known.  What  we  now  call  the 
Scotch  tongue  is  nothing  but  a  variety  of  Northern 
English.  Furthermore,  it  was  invariably  called  English 
by  the  men  who  wrote  in  it  during  the  fourteenth  and 


The  Scotch  Dialect.  135 

fifteenth  centuries,  and  generally  by  those  who  wrote 
in  it  during  the  sixteenth.  During  this  last  period, 
however,  the  term  English  began  to  be  disused,  and 
instead  it  was  sometimes  designated  as  the  Scotch 
tongue,  as  opposed  to  the  English.  This  would  un- 
doubtedly have  become  the  established  practice  had 
the  two  peoples  remained  under  separate  governments  ; 
but  the  union  of  the  crowns  by  the  accession,  in  1603, 
of  James  VI.  of  Scotland  to  the  English  throne  as 
James  L,  caused  the  tongue  of  the  smaller  country  to 
lose  its  independent  position.  After  that  date  it  came 
to  be  considered  and  called  the  Scotch  dialect  of  the 
English  language. 

Scotch  literature  may  be  said  to  begin  with  John 
Barbour,  Archdeacon  of  Aberdeen,  who  died  in  1395. 
He  was  the  author  of  several  works  ;  but  the  one  by 
which  he  is  principally  known  is  the  historical  poem 
called  the  "  Brus,"  which,  as  he  himself  tells  us,  he 
finished  in  1375.  It  contains  between  thirteen  and 
fourteen  thousand  lines,  and  celebrates  the  deeds  of 
Robert  Bruce,  who  successfully  defended  the  indepen- 
dence of  Scotland  against  the  English.  Barbour  was 
followed  by  Andrew  Wyntoun,  prior  of  the  monastery 
of  St.  Serf's  Inch  in  Loch  Leven.  Between  1420  and 
1424,  he  wrote  a  metrical  history  entitled  the  "  Orygy- 
nale  Cronykil  of  Scotland."  Far  the  best  work  of  this 
earlier  period  is  the  production  of  James  I.,  who 
reigned  nominally  from  1406  to  1437,  and  actually 
ruled  the  country  from  1424  to  1437.  It  is  a  poem 
of  nearly  fourteen  hundred  lines,  and  is  called  "  The 


136  English  Language. 

Kinges  Quair."1  It  was  written  in  1423,  while  he 
was  in  captivity  in  England,  in  honor  of  the  daughter 
of  the  Earl  of  Somerset,  who  afterwards  became  his 
wife. 

The  metrical  histories  of  Barbour  and  Andrew  of 
Wyntoun  were  continued  in  the  latter  half  of  the  fif- 
teenth century  by  Henry  the  Minstrel,  or  Blind  Harry, 
as  he  is  more  commonly  called.     In  a  poem  of  twelve 
thousand   lines    he    celebrated    the    exploits,    real    or 
imaginary,  of  the  Scottish  hero,  William  Wallace.     A 
contemporary  of  his  was  Robert  Henryson  of  Dunferm- 
line, who  wrote  a  number  of  poetical  compositions. 
Among  his  writings  may  be  mentioned  a  collection  of 
thirteen  fables,  and  "  The  Testament  of  Cresseid,"  a 
sequel  to  the  "  Troilus  and  Cressida  "  of  Chaucer.  The 
greatest  name  of  all  this  early  period  is  William  Dunbar, 
who  flourished  from  about  1460  to  about  1520.    His 
works  are  very  various  in  their  character,  embracing  a 
number  of  lyrical,  allegorical,  and  satirical  pieces.   Con- 
temporary with  him  was  Gawin  Douglas,  Bishop  of  Dun- 
keld,  whose  most  famous  production  was  his  translation 
of  Vergil's  ".Eneid,"  with  prologues  of  his  own  prefixed 
to  each  book.    But  perhaps  the  poet  of  the  sixteenth 
century  who  was  then  most  widely  read  by  all  classes 
was   Sir   David   Lindsay.      His  popularity  was  largely 
due  to  his  attacks  on  abuses  that  prevailed  both  in 
church  and   state,   and    his  works    are    credited  with 
having  exerted  considerable  influence    in    forwarding 
the  cause  of  the  Reformation. 

1  Quair,  '  a  book  ' ;  Modern  English  quire. 


The  Scotch  Dialect.  137 

These  are  the  most  important  of  the  Scotch  authors 
who  flourished  during  this  early  period.  The  litera- 
ture written  in  the  Scotch  dialect,  after  the  union  of 
the  crowns,  is  often  of  a  high  order,  particularly  in 
lyric  poetry.  Much  of  it  is  characterized  by  a  degree 
of  excellence  to  which  the  literature  before  the  union 
can  rarely  lay  claim.  This  latter,  indeed,  has  received 
great  praise  from  some ;  but  to  most  readers  the 
works  belonging  to  it  are  apt  to  seem  uninteresting, 
and  they  are  certainly  very  long.  In  spite  of  the 
merit  of  occasional  passages,  and  even  of  occasional 
poems,  it  must  be  said  of  early  Scottish  literature, 
that,  taken  as  a  whole,  it  requires  patience  to  read  it, 
and  patriotism  to  admire  it. 

The  particular  variety  of  the  Northern  dialect  which 
was  adopted  in  literature  while  Scotland  remained  an 
independent  kingdom  was  that  spoken  in  Edinburgh 
and  its  neighborhood.  Here,  as  in  most  countries, 
the  speech  of  the  court  and  capital  became  the  stand- 
ard speech.  From  the  outset  it  was  exposed  to  two 
influences  that  did  not  affect  the  language  of  England 
itself.  There  was,  first,  the  tongue  of  the  Celtic 
inhabitants,  who  formed  so  large  a  proportion  of  the 
population  subject  to  the  Scottish  monarch.  With 
this  it  came  into  immediate  contact,  and  from  it 
naturally  borrowed  some  words.  Secondly,  there  was 
for  centuries  a  more  or  less  close  alliance  between 
France  and  Scotland,  brought  about  by  their  common 
hostility  to  England.  Men  from  one  country  were 
often  engaged  in  the  service  of  the  king  of  the  other. 


138  flish 

Bodies  of  French  troops  were  occasionally  stationed 

in  Scotland.  Hence  it  was  that  from  that  tongue 
wore  introduced  into  the  Scotch  dialect  a  number  o\ 
words  never  used,  either  in  conversation  or  in  writing, 
south  of  the  Tweed. 

Furthermore,  the  Scotch  language  of  literature  was 
affected  to  some  degree  by  the  literary  language  oi  its 
more  powerful  neighbor.  The  influence  of  Chaucer, 
both  on  style  and  manner  of  treatment,  is  very  notice- 
able in  the  compositions  of  several  of  the  early  Scotch 
poets.  It  is.  indeed,  a  signal  illustration  of  the  power 
over  the  development  of  a  language  exerted  by  an 
author  of  great  genius,  that  many  forms  characteristic 
of  the  Midland  dialect,  but  foreign  to  the  Northern, 
were  introduced  from  his  works  into  the  variety  of  the 
latter  dialect  in  which  early  Scotch  literature  was  com- 
posed, though  they  seem  never  to  have  maintained 
themselves  there.  The  superiority  of  English  liters 
ture  could  not.  indeed,  fail  to  make  itself  felt  in  the 
case  of  tongues  so  nearly  allied.  Still,  had  the  two 
countries  continued  to  be  separate  nationalities,  differ- 
ences in  speech  would  have  become  thoroughly  estab- 
lished ;  and  in  the  island  o\  (beat  Britain  there  would 
have  been,  perhaps,  two  sister  languages  as  distinct 
from  one  another  as  are.  for  instance,  Spanish  ami 
Portuguese.  But,  as  has  been  pointed  out.  the  union 
of  the  two  ciowns  at  the  beginning  o\  the  seventeenth 
century  reduced  the  S<  ottish,  from  the  position  o(  a 
tongue  independent  of  the  English,  to  that  o\  a  dialect 
of  it.     Having  no  longer  any  common  literal  \  stand- 


'I  he   Scotch  Dialect.  139 

ard  within  its  iily  di       _        into   a 

number  il  dialects.     Each  culiari- 

ties  of  it-;  .      and  al! 

them,  when  used  in  literature,  have  been  largely 
affected  by  the  influence  of  the  standard  English. 
No  small  share  of  the  poetry  <  in  wh<v 

called  the  Scotch  dialect  is  S  tch  rather  in  name 
than  in  reality.  It  is,  in  fact,  literary  English  clothed 
in  Scottish  spelling,  and  rendered  only  a  little  more 
strange  by  the  introduction  of  a  :  -vincial  words. 

Of  i  in  such  a  statement,  it  is  only  the  written 

language  that  is  considered,  not  the  spoken;  for  the 
Scotch  pronunciation  varies  widely  in  some  resp- 
from  that  of  the  classical  tongue.  But  this  adoption 
of  forms  and  grammatical  constructions  belonging  to 
the  English  of  literature  shows,  that,  even  in  this 
peculiar  home  of  the  Northern  dialect,  the  Midland 
has,  here  as  elsewhere,  proved  too  powerful  for  its 
ancient  rival. 


CHAPTER   VII. 

CHANGES   IN   THE  MIDDLE   ENGLISH    PERIOD 
(i35°-l55°)- 

It  is  with  the  Middle   English  period  that  English 
literature  in  the  limited  but  strictly  proper  sense  of 
the  word  may  be  said  to  begin.     The  production  of 
writings  of  a  character  so  high  as  to  be  recognized 
everywhere  as  authoritative  standards  of   expression 
could  not  fail  to  have  an  immediate  effect  upon  the 
future  of   the  language.     It  is  the  one   great  result 
of  the  influences  now  brought  to  bear  upon  it,  that, 
from  the  end  of  the  fourteenth  century,  our  tongue 
has    pursued    an    orderly    development.       It    suffers 
changes,    and,    indeed,    constant    changes,    both    in 
grammar  and  in  vocabulary;   if   it  did  not,  it  would 
no   longer  be   a  living  speech.     But  these  changes 
take  place  within  certain  well-defined  limits;  they 
require  the  consent  of  vast  numbers,  sometimes  of 
generations;  they    are    spread   over  great   spaces  of 
time.     The  conservative    and    restraining    influence 
of    literature  over  language  necessarily  grows   more 
powerful  with  every  successive  century,  because  liter- 
ature itself  is  read  and  studied  by  constantly  increas- 

140 


Changes  in  the  Middle  English  Period.     141 

ing  numbers.  The  changes  that  have  taken  place 
during  the  five  hundred  years  that  have  gone  by  since 
the  beginning  of  the  Middle  English  period  bear  not 
the  slightest  comparison,  either  in  extent  or  impor- 
tance, with  those  that  took  place  during  the  two  hun- 
dred years  before  that  period.  How  comparatively 
insignificant  the  former  are  has  already  been  fully 
exemplified  in  the  extract  which  has  been  given  from 
Chaucer,  with  the  ancient  spelling  in  one  case  pre- 
served, and  in  the  other  case  with  it  modernized.1 
An  examination  of  these  shows  clearly  that  it  is  the 
difference  of  orthography,  far  more  than  the  differ- 
ence of  vocabulary  and  of  construction,  that  makes 
the  language  of  the  fourteenth  century  seem  difficult. 
English,  therefore,  from  this  time  forth,  enters 
upon  an  entirely  new  history.  In  order  to  compre- 
hend clearly  the  character  of  the  transitions  through 
which  it  has  gone  during  the  past  five  hundred  years, 
it  is  necessary  to  have  well  in  mind  one  or  two  prin- 
ciples that  underlie  the  development  of  language. 
It  has  already  been  pointed  out,  that,  in  the  speech 
of  rude  and  ignorant  men,  grammatical  changes 
take  place  rapidly;  whereas,  under  ordinary  cir- 
cumstances, few  new  words  are  added  to  the  vocab- 
ulary. This  fact  becomes  very  noticeable  when  a 
cultivated  tongue  ceases  to  be  used  any  longer  by 
the  educated,  and  is  heard  only  from  the  mouths  of 
the  illiterate.  The  variations  which  spring  up  under 
such  circumstances  are  easy  of  observation,  because 

1  Pages  100,  101. 


142  English  Language. 

we  have  an  ideal  standard  preserved  by  which  to 
compare  the  present  with  the  past.  We  have  seen 
this  fully  exemplified  in  the  breaking  up  of  the  liter- 
ary Anglo-Saxon  and  its  transition  into  the  unculti- 
vated Old  English.  Inflectional  forms  were  largely 
confounded  and  discarded,  and  syntax  underwent 
violent  alteration.  On  the  other  hand,  little  was 
added  to  the  vocabulary  of  the  speech,  much  was  taken 
away  from  it.  Words  necessary  to  convey  the  knowl- 
edge or  to  express  the  feelings  of  all  were  retained; 
but  the  special  language  of  the  educated,  the  language 
of  literature  so  far  as  it  is  distinct  from  the  language 
of  common  life,  disappeared  very  largely. 

The  precise  reverse  of  this  condition  of  things  is 
true  of  any  language  in  which  is  embodied  the  collo- 
quial and  written  speech  of  a  cultivated  people.  In  it 
no  sudden  alterations  can  be  made  in  the  grammar, 
because  great  literary  models  have  given  permanent 
form  and  character  to  that  which  already  exists.  Nor 
can  violent  alterations  ever  be  made  without  a  revo- 
lution mighty  enough  to  upset  the  language  itself  in 
its  existing  form.  While,  therefore,  in  a  cultivated 
speech,  changes  in  inflection  and  syntax  do  take 
place,  they  invariably  take  place  slowly  and  on  a 
small  scale;  and,  if  they  happen  to  attract  observa- 
tion at  the  time,  they  never  succeed  in  establishing 
themselves  without  a  struggle.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  vocabulary  is  constantly  increasing.  The  domain 
of  knowledge  is  always  widening;  and  new  terms  are 
constantly  needed  to  express  the  new  facts  which  the 


Changes  in  the  Middle  English  Period.     143 

many-sided  activity  of  the  race  has  gathered,  and  the 
new  ideas  it  has  conceived.  An  existing  vocabulary, 
therefore,  cannot  for  any  long  period  satisfy  the  de- 
mand made  upon  it;  or,  in  other  words,  a  living 
tongue  can  never  become  what  is  called  fixed  until 
the  men  who  speak  it  get  to  be  intellectually  dead. 
There  is,  inconsequence,  an  absolute  necessity  resting 
upon  every  generation  of  doing  one  or  all  of  three 
things.  It  must  either  develop  new  words  from  exist- 
ing roots,  or  it  must  impose  new  senses  upon  words 
already  in  use,  or  it  must  borrow  strange  words  from 
foreign  tongues.  In  modern  cultivated  languages  it 
will  be  found  that  these  three  agencies  are  in  active 
operation  side  by  side. 

From  the  beginning  of  the  Middle  English  period 
till  the  present  time,  both  of  these  principles  have 
been  fully  illustrated.  On  the  one  hand,  there  has 
been  aversion  to  grammatical  change,  with  conse- 
quent slowness  in  its  adoption;  on  the  other,  there 
has  been  exhibited  a  marked  fondness  for  new  or 
foreign  words,  and  facility  in  their  formation  or  in- 
troduction. From  the  fourteenth  to  the  beginning 
of  the  seventeenth  century  the  aversion  to  the  intro- 
duction of  new  grammatical  forms  or  constructions 
was  by  no  means  so  decided  as  it  has  been  since  the 
latter  date.  Literature  during  this  early  period  had 
not  begun  to  exert  its  full  restraining  effect  upon  the 
users  of  language.  In  truth,  the  standard  speech  was 
not  then  so  indisputably  established,  that  the  inflec- 
tions of  different  dialects  did  not  continue  to  strive 


H4  English  Lan^uas^e 


with  one  another  to  be  adopted  in  it  as  the  correct 
or  favorite  form.  In  some  cases  even,  it  was  not 
definitely  settled  till  the  seventeenth  century  or  later, 
which  one  of  two  grammatical  endings  the  literary 
language  would  prefer. 

No  such  feelings  have  prevailed  or  could  prevail 
in  regard  to  the  introduction  of  new  words.  That 
would  depend  almost  wholly  upon  the  real  or  fancied 
needs  of  the  users  of  language.  Hence  it  is  that 
far  the  largest  accessions  have  taken  place  during 
the  Modern  English  period,  and  even  late  in  that 
period.  The  composite  character  of  the  vocabulary 
had  been  established  by  the  middle  of  the  fourteenth 
century;  by  the  end  of  it  the  language  had  received 
and  assimilated  nearly  all  the  words  it  has  ever  taken 
from  the  Old  French.  During  the  fifteenth  century 
there  were  no  borrowings  on  a  very  large  scale  from 
any  quarter.  This  smallness  of  addition  to  the  vocab- 
ulary was  mainly  due  to  the  failure  of  the  intellectual 
movement  that  had  begun  so  auspiciously  at  the 
beginning  of  the  Middle  English  period.  Chaucer 
died  in  1400;  but  he  left  no  successors  to  his  genius 
or  his  authority;  and,  for  more  than  one  hundred 
years  after  his  death,  literature  was  in  a  state  of 
collapse.  Consequently  the  new  words  that  were 
brought  in  did  not  in  many  cases  establish  them- 
selves permanently  in  the  speech.  Nor  was  it,  in- 
deed, until  the  sixteenth  century,  that  they  began  to  be 
introduced  extensively.  Then,  as  in  the  previous 
century,  they  were  taken,  as  a  general  rule,  directly 


Changes  in  the  Middle  English  Period.     145 

from  the  Latin,  and  a  large  number  of  those  bor- 
rowed from  it  at  that  time  have  not  survived.  As, 
therefore,  the  lexical  additions  of  the  Middle  Eng- 
lish period  were  either  not  great  or  not  of  great 
importance,  it  is  the  grammatical  changes  that  went 
on  during  that  time  which  will  principally  demand 
attention.  At  this  point  it  will  be  necessary  to  lay 
down  certain  principles  that  affect  the  development 
of  the  inflectional  system  in  a  cultivated  tongue. 

In  the  history  of  inflections  two  counteracting  in- 
fluences, which  are  always  operating  upon  language, 
become  plainly  visible.  One  of  these  is  the  tendency 
to  bring  about  uniformity,  the  other  the  tendency  to 
arrest  all  change;  no  matter  in  either  case  whether 
the  result  is  to  be  desired  or  to  be  deplored.  It  is 
more  especially  the  colloquial  speech  with  the  lighter 
literature  that  depicts  it,  that  strives  unconsciously  to 
reduce  all  inflections  to  absolute  regularity.  To  this 
tendency  the  great  body  of  the  literature  already 
created  is  in  active  and  constant  opposition.  It 
resists  any  alteration  in  established  forms  which  have 
received  the  sanction  of  good  usage.  A  few  illustra- 
tions, taken  from  the  inflectional  system  of  the  noun 
and  of  the  verb,  will  make  these  statements  perfectly 
clear. 

In  Modern  English  the  large  majority  of  verbs  form 
the  preterite  by  the  addition  of  -d  or  -ed.  Conse- 
quently there  is  a  disposition  on  the  part  of  children 
just  learning  the  language — and,  to  some  extent,  of 
the  uneducated  — to  bring  all  verbs  without  distinc- 


1 46  English  Language. 

lion  under  the  operation  of  this  same  general  law,  to 
add  -d  or  -ed  to  verbs  that  regularly  form  their  pret- 
erite in  a  different  manner.  Hence  we  hear  such  ex- 
pressions as  1  seed,  I  drawed,  I  drinked,  J  knowed. 
But  the  influence  of  the  literary  language  speedily 
overcomes  this  tendency  in  all  persons  properly  edu- 
cated, and  the  correct  preterite  is  soon  used  invari- 
ably and  unconsciously.  But  at  a  time  when  no 
literature  existed  influential  enough  to  establish  a 
standard  speech,  to  which  all  felt  bound  to  conform, 
the  tendency  to  bring  about  uniformity  on  this  very 
point  was  exceedingly  powerful.  Hence  a  vast  num- 
ber of  verbs  that  once  formed  their  preterite  by 
vowel- change  replaced  it  by  -d  or  -ed.  For  in- 
stance, holp,  the  preterite  of  help,  became  helped. 
The  establishment  of  a  standard  literature,  however, 
prevented  a  large  number  from  abandoning  their 
original  inflection  and  adopting  the  one  which  the 
large  majority  of  verbs  followed.  Furthermore,  there 
were  a  cerlain  number  of  verbs  in  which  neither 
tendency  triumphed  absolutely.  For  instance,  thrive 
can  take  with  perfect  propriety  as  its  preterite  either 
throve  or  thrived. 

Let  us,  furthermore,  take  the  case  of  the  noun. 
The  regular  formation  of  the  plural  is  in  Modern 
English  by  the  adding  of  the  ending  -s.  Hence 
arises,  naturally,  a  disposition  to  make  all  nouns 
conform  to  this  rule.  This  we  see  exemplified  in 
the  tendency  of  young  children  to  say  mans,  foots, 
sheeps,  instead  of  the  proper  plurals.     But  in  the  case 


Changes  in  the  Middle  English  Period.     [47 

of  nouns  taken  from  foreign  tongues,  all  users  of 
language  exhibit  this  same  disposition.  Such  nouns, 
when  first  brought  in,  almost  invariably  retain  the  in- 
flection they  have  in  the  tongue  from  which  they  have 
been  borrowed.  But  if  the  word  come  into  fairly 
common  use,  they  are  apt  to  give  up  the  foreign 
plural  and  assume  in  its  place  the  regular  English 
plural  in  -s.  Thus  the  Greek  dogma  had,  for  a  while 
after  its  original  introduction,  the  Greek  plural  dog- 
mata;  similarly,  the  Latin  omen  had  at  the  outset  the 
Latin  plural  o/nina.  But  as  these  words  began  to  be 
generally  employed,  the  tendency  to  produce  uni- 
formity prevailed.  Dogmata  was  discarded  for  dog- 
mas, omina  for  omens. 

But  such  a  result  is  far  from  happening  invariably. 
For  various  reasons  foreign  nouns  sometimes  establish 
themselves  so  firmly  in  the  language  of  literature  that 
the  original  plural  maintains  itself  undisputed.  Thus 
the  desire  for  uniformity  has  never  been  sufficient  to 
induce  the  users  of  language  to  give  up  genera  and 
adopt  genuses  as  the  plural  of  gem/s.  But  in  the 
noun  also,  as  in  the  case  of  the  verb,  the  operation 
of  the  two  counteracting  influences  has  sometimes 
resulted  in  giving  us  double  forms.  Formula  and 
memorandum,  for  illustration,  have  each  two  plurals 
in  correct  use,  formula  and  formulas,  memoranda 
and  memorandums. 

It  is  from  the  conflict  of  these  two  opposing 
agencies  that  the  grammatical  forms  of  the  lan- 
guage came  out  at  the  end  of   the  Middle   English 


148  English  Language. 

period  wheat  we  now  find  them.  The  reduction  to 
uniformity  that  was  then  effected  has  never  since 
been  disturbed;  the  anomalies  that  were  then  left  in 
our  speech  have  remained  with  us  still.  Here  the 
most  important  of  the  changes  that  took  place  are  all 
that  can  be  given.  As  before,  the  usage  of  Chaucer 
will  be  taken  as  the  standard  of  the  latter  half  of  the 
fourteenth  century,  and  the  comparison  will  accord- 
ingly be  made  between  it  and  the  form  of  the  lan- 
guage which  had  become  established  at  the  beginning 
of  the  Modern  English  period. 

Changes  in  the  Inflection.  —  Nouns.  —  In  the  writ- 
ings of  Chaucer  the  noun  had  regularly  for  the  plural 
the  ending  in  -s.  Still  there  remained  then  a  num- 
ber which  had  failed  to  conform  to  this  general  law, 
and  terminated  instead  in  -;/.  These  were  of  two 
classes.  Some  were  descendants  of  nouns  belonging 
to  the  Anglo-Saxon  declension,  which  formed  its 
plural  in  -an,  later  becoming  weakened  into  -en. 
This  ending  they  continued  to  retain  exclusively  in 
certain  words  such  as  eyen  and  oxen,  or  wavered 
between  it  and  the  ending  in  -s,  as  in  been,  bees,  and 
ton,  toos,  the  modern  'toes.'  By  the  middle  of  the 
sixteenth  century  the  principle  of  uniformity  had 
triumphed  in  the  case  of  most.  All  of  this  class 
had  passed  over  to  the  regular  formation  in  -s,  with 
the  single  exception  of  oxen.  Eyen  or  erne  may  also 
be  found  along  with  eyes,  but  then,  as  occasionally 
now,  only  in  poetry;  and  the  same  statement  is  true 
of  shoon  for  shoes. 


Changes  in  the  Middle  English  Period.     149 

Other  nouns,  however,  had  had  the  termination 
in  -n  added  by  what  had  originally  been  a  blunder, 
but  which  blunder  had  in  Chaucer's  time  become 
correct  usage.  Most  of  these  denoted  the  family 
relation,  and  two  of  them,  dpughtren  (A.  S.  dohtni) 
and  sistren  or  sustren  (A.  S.  s7veostru),  assumed  be- 
fore the  end  of  the  Middle  English  period  the  regu- 
lar ending  in  -s,  which  they  also  had  at  times  at  its 
beginning.  But  children  (A.  S.  cildru)  and  brethren 
(A.  S.  brddrii)  and  kine  (A.  S.  cy)  still  preserve  an 
-11  to  which  etymologically  they  are  not  entitled. 
The  first  of  these  has  maintained  itself  as  the  only 
standard  form;  but  the  two  others  have  been  for  the 
most  part  supplanted  by  the  regular  formations 
brothers  and  cows.  Yet  it  was  not  until  almost  the 
beginning  of  the  seventeenth  century  that  either  of 
these  two  last-named  plurals  had  made  a  permanent 
place  for  itself  in  the  literary  speech.  Neither  one 
of  them  is  found  in  our  version  of  the  Bible. 

Again,  in  Chaucer,  a  number  of  nouns  are  found 
with  the  plural  of  the  same  form  as  the  singular. 
They  are  usually  descendants  of  the  Anglo-Saxon 
neuter  noun  of  the  vowel-declension, 1  many  of  which 
had  the  nominative  and  accusative  plural  the  same  as 
the  nominative  and  accusative  singular.  Thus  hits, 
'  house, '  had  also  the  sense  of  '  houses,'  and  the  dia- 
lectic '  housen  '  has  accordingly  as  much  claim  to  ety- 
mological correctness  as  the  present  regular  form. 
Most  of  these  nouns  at  the  beginning  of  the  Middle 

1  See  Part  II.,  sec.  25. 


150  English  Language. 

English  period  had  conformed  to  the  regular  inflec- 
tion, and  adopted  -s  as  the  ending  of  the  plural.  A 
few  held  out,  as,  for  instance,  horse  and  thing  and 
year.  These  sometimes  added  -s  to  denote  the  plural, 
and  sometimes  retained  in  that  number  the  singular 
form.  By  the  middle  of  the  sixteenth  century,  how- 
ever, all  of  them,  except  in  certain  phrases,  were 
inflected  regularly.  The  same  statement  is  true  of  a 
few  words,  the  genitive  of  which  in  Chaucer  and 
others  had  sometimes  no  ending  at  all,  or  ended  in 
-e.  Thus  brother  sone  would  be  '  brother's  son,'  and 
of  hevene  kyng  would  be  '  of  heaven's  king.'  All  of 
these  genitives  early  adopted  the  regular  termination 
in  -s. 

Pronouns.  —  In  the  pronoun  the  only  change  of 
importance  that  took  place  during  the  Middle  English 
period  was  in  the  plural  of  the  pronoun  of  the  third 
person.  In  Chaucer  this  had  they  in  the  nominative, 
in  place  of  the  original  In  ' ;  but,  in  the  genitive  and 
objective  were  still  retained  the  original  here  and  hem. 
But  even  in  his  own  time  their  and  them,  correspond- 
ing to  the  nominative  they,  were  widely  used.  In 
the  fifteenth  century  the  latter  were  adopted  into  the 
speech  of  all,  though  even  to  this  day  a  relic  of  the 
objective  hem  survives  in  the  form  of  'em.2 

Adjectives.  — At  the  beginning  of  the  Middle  Eng- 
lish period,  the  adjective,  as  we  have  seen,3  had  been 
nearly  stripped  of  the  numerous  inflections  it  had 
possessed  in  the  Anglo-Saxon.     During  the  two  cen- 

1  Sec  Part  II.,  sec.  103.  -  lb.,  sec.  108.  :;  See  page  96. 


Changes  in  the  Middle  English  Period.     1 5  1 

turies  that  followed,  it  lost  the  little  it  had  retained. 
The  use  of  the  final  -e,  to  denote  the  plural  and  the 
definite  declension  in  the  singular,  was  abandoned 
altogether ;  and  the  adjective  was  left,  as  we  now 
have  it,  without  any  inflection  whatever.  In  its  com- 
parison the  vowel-modification,  which  in  some  cases 
it  underwent  in  Chaucer  and  his  contemporaries,  dis- 
appeared before  the  middle  of  the  sixteenth  century. 
Long  and  strong  and  old,  at  the  beginning  of  the 
Middle  English  period,  had  for  comparatives  lenger, 
strenger,  and  elder ;  at  the  end  of  it,  they  had  the 
regular  forms,  longer,  stronger,  and  older,  now  in  use. 
Here,  however,  the  tendency  towards  uniformity  did 
not  meet  with  perfect  success ;  for  old  has  continued 
to  keep,,  along  with  the  regular  form,  the  earlier  elder. 
Verbs.  —  Attention  has  already  been  called  to  the 
fact  that,  after  the  Norman  Conquest,  the  disposition 
became  widely  prevalent  to  drop  the  final  -n.  But, 
though  this  was  always  in  operation,  it  had  not,  even 
in  the  time  of  Chaucer,  been  carried  out  to  a  com- 
plete result.  In  his  writings  the  infinitive  of  the  verb, 
and  the  plural  number  of  both  the  present  and  the 
past  tenses  of  the  indicative,  end  in  -en  or  -e  ;  thus  we 
have  to  hopen  or  to  hope,  they  h'open  or  they  hope,  and 
they  hopeden  or  they  hopede.  In  the  case  of  the  past 
tense  it  is  not  at  all  unfrequent,  also,  to  have  the  final 
-e  dropped  in  pronunciation  ;  it  sometimes  happened 
in  the  case  of  the  other  two  parts  of  the  verb  that 
have  been  mentioned.  This  tendency  to  drop  the  -;/, 
which  had  been  the  prevailing  one  in  the  fourteenth 


152  English  Language. 

century,  became  almost  universally  established  in  the 
fifteenth.  Ben  Jonson  in  his  English  Grammar  asserts, 
that,  until  about  the  reign  of  King  Henry  VIII.  (1509- 
1547),  present  plurals  were  found  in  -en.  But,  though 
they  are  found  at  that  time,  they  lingered  then,  as 
they  did  at  a  later  period,  as  survivals  of  the  past, 
rather  than  as  forms  in  living,  current  use.  Along 
with  the  -;/  gradually  disappeared  the  final  -e.  It  was 
dropped  universally  during  the  fifteenth  century  in 
pronunciation ;  in  some  cases  it  was  dropped  in  the 
spelling,  and  in  other  cases  retained. 

Failure  to  produce  Complete  Uniformity.  —  From 
this  survey,  it  is  clear  that  a  steady  movement  went  on 
during  the  Middle  English  period  towards  the  produc- 
tion of  absolute  uniformity  of  inflection.  But,  while 
this  accomplished  much,  it  did  not  succeed  in  accom- 
plishing everything.  In  spite  of  it,  anomalous  forms 
continued  to  exist.  Sistren  and  doughteren  and  ton 
had  become  sisters  and  daughters  and  toes ;  but  oxen 
and  children  had  failed  to  pass  over  into  axes  and 
childs.  The  plural  hors  and  night  and  year  and  thing 
had  become  horses,  nights,  years,  and  things ;  but  sheep 
and  deer  had  not  become  sheeps  and  deers.  Nor  did 
plurals  whose  form  was  due  to  vowel -modification, 
such  as  men,  fret,  mice,  geese,  lose  any  of  their  num- 
ber after  the  fourteenth  century.  From  the  end  of 
that  century  on,  the  influence  of  the  opposing  agency 
began  to  make  itself  more  and  more  felt.  The  com- 
plete success  of  any  radical  movement  to  bring  about 
an  ideal  regularity  was  in  a  large  number  of  instances 


Changes  in  the  Middle  Englisli  Period.     153 

counteracted  by  that  conservative  opposition  to  all 
change  which  is  a  marked  characteristic  of  cultivated 
speech.  This  has  been  seen  in  the  inflection  of  the 
noun  ;  but  it  asserted  itself  most  conspicuously  in  the 
conjugation  of  the  verb.  Here  a  movement  toward 
uniformity,  which  had  been  in  active  operation  since 
the  break-up  of  the  Anglo-Saxon,  was  finally  arrested. 
Not  only,  indeed,  was  it  arrested,  but  it  may  be  said 
that  a  movement  in  the  opposite  direction  started  into 
being,  though  it  has  never  been  productive  of  impor- 
tant results. 

There  are  in  English,  as  in  every  other  Teutonic 
tongue,  two  leading  conjugations  of  the  verbs.  The 
one  is  called  the  old,  or  strong,  conjugation ;  the 
other,  the  new,  or  weak.  The  main  distinction  be- 
tween them  is  easy  of  comprehension.  The  weak 
verb  adds  now,  or  once  added,  a  syllable  to  form 
the  past  tense.  This  syllable  was  in  Anglo-Saxon,  -de, 
which,  under  certain  circumstances,  became  -te.  Mod- 
ern English  has  invariably  dropped  the  final  -e  of  this 
termination,  leaving  it  -d  or  -/,  and  generally  inserting 
an  e  before  the  d.  For  illustration,  the  verb  fyllan, 
'to  fill,'  formed  a  preterite  fyl-de ;  drypan,  'to 
drip,'  formed  the  preterite  dryp-te.  In  a  very  few 
cases,  also,  the  vowel  of  the  root  was  varied  ;  thus, 
tellan,  '  to  tell,'  formed  the  preterite  teal-de,  '  tol-d  ' ; 
secern,  'to  seek,'  formed  the  preterite  soh-te,  '  sough-t.' 
On  the  other  hand,  the  strong  conjugation  added 
nothing  to  form  the  past  tense,  but  the  vowel  of  the 
root  in  every  case  underwent  change  ;  thus,  drinc-an, 


154  English  Language. 

1  to  drink,'  had  in  the  first  person  of  the  preterite 
singular  dram ;  glid-an,  '  to  glide,'  had  glad  for  the 
corresponding  form  of  its  preterite. 

For  the  three  centuries  immediately  following  the 
Norman  Conquest  the  distinction  between  these  two 
conjugations  was  largely  broken  down  ;  but  the  changes 
that  resulted  inured  almost  entirely  to  the  benefit  of  one 
of  them.  Numbers  of  verbs  originally  having  the  strong 
inflection  gave  it  up,  and  took  the  weak  in  its  place. 
Many,  indeed,  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  strong  verbs  had 
been  wholly  lost  to  the  language  by  the  beginning  of 
the  Middle  English  period.  Furthermore,  so  many  of 
those  that  were  retained  had  become  weak,  and  the 
general  movement  in  that  direction  was  so  decided, 
that  it  seemed  merely  a  question  of  time  when  the 
strong  inflection  would  disappear  entirely.  But  this 
movement  received  a  check  with  the  creation  of  a 
great  native  literature.  In  fact,  the  strong  conjuga- 
tion has  lost  nothing  during  the  past  three  hundred 
years,  and  has  lost  but  little  during  the  past  five 
hundred. 

This  is  a  statement  directly  contrary  to  the  one 
frequently  made.  It  is  a  common  assertion  that  the 
strong  verbs  are  disappearing  from  our  tongue.  The 
assertion,  however,  has  no  foundation  in  fact.  On 
the  contrary,  not  a  single  strong  verb  that  was  in 
regular  use  at  the  end  of  the  Middle  English  period, 
more  than  three  hundred  years  ago,  has  since  been 
lost.  A  few  strong  forms,  then  found,  are  scarcely 
used  now,  and  when  used  are  almost  invariably  limited 


Changes  in  the  Middle  English  Period.      155 

to  the  language  of  poetry,  as,  for  instance,  holp  and 
clomb.  But  even  then  these  were  archaic,  and  occur 
far  less  frequently  than  the  weak  forms  helped  and 
elimbed.  In  fact,  Ben  Jonson,  in  his  Grammar,  ex- 
pressly asserts  of  holp  that  it  "  is  seldom  used  save 
with  the  poets."  In  some  instances,  also,  weak  pret- 
erite forms,  such,  for  example,  as  shined,  sprang  up 
and  perpetuated  themselves  alongside  of  the  strong 
forms.  But  there  has  been  a  steady  tendency,  on  the 
whole,  to  discard  the  use  of  these,  and  some,  once  in 
common  use,  are  now  rarely  heard ;  for  there  has 
never  been  a  period  when  this  particular  tendency 
has  been  more  pronounced  than  at  present. 

In  fact,  the  reverse  of  the  common  impression  is 
the  truth.  A  preference  for  the  strong  conjugation 
has  manifested  itself  in  our  tongue  since  the  establish- 
ment of  literature.  In  accordance  with  this  feeling, 
weak  verbs  have  in  a  few  instances  assumed  the  strong 
inflection.  Dig,  for  illustration,  now  forms  the  pret- 
erite dug;  but  in  early  Modern  English  digged  is  the 
form  found.  Even  a  certain  number  of  anomalous 
verbs  of  the  weak  conjugation  have  successfully  re- 
sisted the  tendency,  once  prevalent,  to  inflect  them 
regularly.  Rcaeh,  to  be  sure,  has  given  up  its  older 
preterite,  raught ;  but  this  it  had  generally  done  early 
in  the  Modern  English  period.  On  the  other  hand, 
weak  verbs  like  teach,  catch,  and  tell,  still  prefer  their 
preterites  taught,  caught,  and  told,  to  the  forms  teached, 
catched,  and  telled,  which  have  at  times  been  in  use. 

These  were  the  main  changes  that  took  place  dur- 


156  English  Language. 

ing  the  Middle  English  period,  as  the  result  of  the 
two  influences  that  are  always  at  work  upon  cultivated 
speech.  One  addition  to  the  inflectional  system  of 
the  verb,  and  one  loss,  are  also  to  be  noted  as  having 
characterized  the  history  of  the  language  during  these 
two  centuries. 

The  addition  was  in  the  shape  of  a  new  method  to 
express  the  relation  of  present  and  past  time.  The 
phrases  compounded  of  parts  of  the  verb  be  and  the 
present  participle,  such,  for  instance,  as  /  am  going, 
and  I  was  going,  had  been  in  common  use  from  the 
earliest  period  of  the  language.  In  addition  to  these  a 
new  verb-phrase,  to  denote  the  present  and  past  tenses, 
wis  established  during  this  period.  It  was  formed  by 
compounding  do  and  did  with  the  infinitive,  seen,  for 
illustration,  in  /  do  go,  and  /  did  go.  Forms  of  this 
kind  made  their  appearance,  indeed,  in  the  language 
in  the  thirteenth  century ;  but  they  were  but  little 
used  either  then  or  for  a  long  time  after.  It  was  not 
until  the  beginning  of  the  fifteenth  century  that  they 
became  common,  and  not  until  the  end  of  it  that  they 
became  general. 

The  loss  was  the  plural  form  of  the  imperative 
mood.  Originally  this  mood  had  distinct  forms  for 
the  second  person  of  the  singular  and  of  the  plural. 
For  illustration,  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  verb  helpan,  'to 
help,'  the  form  used  in  the  imperative  would  always  be 
help,  whenever  a  single  person  was  addressed  ;  when- 
ever more  than  one,  the  form  would  be  helpdd,  which 
in    later    English    would    become    and    did    become 


Changes  in  the  Middle  English  Period.      157 

helpeth.  In  the  fourteenth  century  the  two  forms  had 
largely  come  to  be  confounded  ;  and  by  the  end  of 
the  fifteenth  the  plural  ending  -{e)th  had  disappeared 
altogether. 

The  Middle  English  period  saw,  also,  the  final 
abandonment  of  the  grammatical  gender,  and  the 
substitution,  in  its  place,  of  one  corresponding  to  the 
natural  distinctions  of  sex.  This  was  the  result  of 
processes  that  had  been  steadily  at  work  since  the 
Norman  Conquest.  In  Anglo-Saxon,  the  gender  of  the 
noun  depended  not  upon  its  meaning,  but  upon  its 
termination,  or  method  of  inflection.  Objects  with 
life  were,  in  consequence,  sometimes  neuter ;  while 
far  more  frequently  objects  without  life  were  mascu- 
line or  feminine.  The  early  language  presents  us  in  this 
respect  the  same  characteristics  as  the  other  tongues 
of  the  Indo-European  family,  such  as  Latin,  Greek, 
or  the  modern  German.  Thus,  in  Anglo-Saxon,  wif, 
'woman,'  'wife,'  was  neuter.  Again,  mud,  'mouth,' 
and  tod, '  tooth,'  were  masculine  ;  tunge, '  tongue,'  and 
nosu,  '  nose,'  were  feminine  ;  cage,  '  eye,'  and  eare, 
'  ear,'  were  neuter.  It  is  evident  that  such  a  system 
of  denoting  gender,  whatever  it  may  have  been  at  the 
beginning,  tended  to  become  a  purely  conventional 
one,  so  far  as  distinctions  of  sex  were  concerned ;  and 
this  it  actually  did  become. 

It  was,  accordingly,  one  great  compensation  for  the 
disappearance  of  inflection,  that  with  it  this  system 
necessarily  disappeared.  A  gender  which  depended 
upon  differences  of  termination  and  declension  could 


158  English  Language. 

not  continue  to  flourish  after  those  differences  had 
been  swept  away.  When  to  this  loss  was  added  the 
still  more  important  loss  of  the  inflection  of  the  adjec- 
tive and  the  adjective  pronouns,  every  method  of 
denoting  it  was  gone.  The  consequence  was,  that  it 
was  the  meaning  that  decided  the  gender  to  which 
the  noun  should  be  ascribed  ;  and  this  necessarily 
brought  the  gender  into  harmony  with  the  real  dis- 
tinctions of  sex.  The  breaking-down  of  the  gram- 
matical system  began  immediately  after  the  Conquest. 
The  substitution  of  the  natural  system  may  be  said 
to  have  been  mainly  effected  before  the  beginning 
of  the  Middle  English  period  ;  by  the  end  of  it,  the 
change  had  become  perfectly  established.  Since  that 
time,  it  is  only  in  the  language  of  poetry,  or  of  passion, 
affectionate  or  inimical  in  its  character,  that  objects 
without  life  are  personified,  or  objects  with  life  are 
spoken  of  as  things  ;  nor  would  even  this  be  possible, 
had  not  a  few  of  the  pronouns  still  retained  a  separate 
form  and  inflections  for  distinctions  of  sex. 

All  these  agencies  were  working  actively  during  the 
Middle  English  period  to  bring  the  language  into  the 
condition  in  which  we  find  it  at  the  beginning  of 
the  reign  of  Elizabeth.  Much  remained  unsettled  and 
uncertain  during  the  fifteenth  century.  A  most  im- 
portant agency  in  establishing  uniformity  was  the 
wide  expansion  given  to  the  influence  of  the  literary 
language  by  the  invention  of  printing.  This  art, 
William  Caxton  (1422 7-1491 )  introduced  into  Eng- 
land  in   1476.     He   translated  many  books   into  his 


Changes  in  the  Middle  English  Period.      159 

native  tongue,  and  the  prologue  to  one  of  them  —  the 
"  Eneydos,"  published  in  1490  —  gives  a  faithful  pic- 
ture of  the  still  unsettled  state  of  the  speech,  and  of 
the  difficulties  that  beset  him  who  sought  to  write  in 
it.  As  it  exhibits  also  the  character  of  the  language 
towards  the  close  of  the  fifteenth  century,  an  extract 
from  it  will  be  given  here.  Caxton,  after  speaking  of 
the  French  romance,  which  was  his  original,  goes  on 
to  add  the  following  account  of  the  condition  of  the 
language  in  his  time  :  — 

And  whan  I  had  aduysed  me  in  this  sayd  boke,  I  delyvered 1 
and  concluded  to  translate  it  in  to  Englysshe,  and  forthwyth  toke 
a  penne  and  ynke  and  wrote  a  leef  or  tweyne,  whyche  I  oversawe 
agayn  to  corecte  it.  And  whan  I  sawe  the  fayr  and  straunge 
termes  therin,  I  doubted2  that  it  sholde  not  please  some  gentyl- 
men  whiche  late  blamed  me,  sayeng  \>*  in  my  translacyons  I 
had  ouer  curyous  termes  whiche  coude  not  be  vnderstande  of 
comyn  peple,  and  desired  me  to  vse  olde  and  homely  termes  in 
my  translacyons;  and  fayn  wolde  I  satysfye  euery  man,  and  so  to 
doo  toke  an  olde  booke  and  redde  therin,  and  certaynly  the 
Englysshe  was  so  rude  and  brood  that  I  coude  not  wele  vnder- 
stande it.  And  also  my  lorde  Abbot  of  Westmynster  ded  do 
shewe3  to  me  late  certayn  euydences  wryton  in  olfle  Englysshe 
for  to  reduce  it  in  to  our  Englysshe  now  vsid.  And  certaynly 
it  was  wreton  in  suche  wyse  that  it  was  more  lyke  to  Dutche 
than  Englysshe.  I  coude  not  reduce  ne  brynge  it  to  be  vnder- 
stonden.  And  certaynly  our  langage  now  vsed  varyeth  ferre 
from  that  whiche  was  vsed  and  spoken  whan  I  was  borne.  For 
we  Englysshe  men  ben  borne  vnder  the  domynacion  of  the 
mone,  whiche  is  ncuer  stedfaste  but  ever  wauerynge,  wexynge 
one  season  and  waneth  and  dycreaseth  another  season.     And 

1  Deliberated.  2  Feared.  3  Caused  to  be  shown. 


160  English  Language. 

that  comyn  Englysshe,  that  is  spoken  in  one  shyre,  varyeth  from 
another.  In  so  moche  that  in  my  dayes  happened  that  certayn 
marchauntes  were  in  a  ship  in  Tamyse,  for  to  haue  sayled  ouer 
the  see  into  Zelande,  and  for  lacke  of  vvynde  thei  taryed  atte 
Forlond,  and  wente  to  land  for  to  refreshe  them.  And  one  of 
theym,  named  Sheffelde,  a  mercer,  cam  in  to  an  hows  and  axed 
for  mete,  and  specyally  he  axyd  after  eggys.  And  the  goode 
wyf  answerde  that  she  coude  speke  no  Frenshe.  And  the  mar- 
chaunt  was  angry,  for  he  also  coude  speke  no  Frenshe,  but 
wolde  haue  hadde  egges,  and  she  vnderstode  hym  not.  And 
thenne  at  laste  a  nother  sayd  that  he  wolde  haue  eyren.  Then 
the  good  wyf  sayd  that  she  vnderstod  hym  wel.  Loo !  what 
sholde  a  man  in  thyse  dayes  now  wryte,  egges  or  eyren?  Cer- 
taynly  it  is  harde  to  playse  euery  man  by  cause  of  dyuersite  and 
chaunge  of  langage.  For  in  these  dayes  euery  man  that  is  in  ony 
reputacyon  in  his  countre  wyll  vtter  his  comynycacyon  and 
maters  in  suche  maners  and  termes  that  fewe  men  shall  vnder- 
stonde  theym.  And  som  honest  and  grete  clerkes  haue  ben 
wyth  me  and  desired  me  to  wryte  the  moste  curyous  termes 
that  I  coude  fynde.  And  thus  bytwene  playn,  rude  and  curyous 
I  stande  abasshed.  But  in  my  judgemente  the  comyn  termes, 
that  be  dayli  vsed,  ben  lyghter  to  be  vnderstonde  than  the  olde 
and  auncyent  Englysshe.  And  for  as  moche  as  this  present 
booke  is  not  for  a  rude  vplondyssh  man  to  laboure  therein,  ne 
rede  it,  but  onely  for  a  clerke  and  a  noble  gentylman  that  feleth 
and  vnderstondeth  in  faytes  of  amies,  in  loue  and  in  noble 
chyvalrye;  therefor  in  a  mcane  bytwene  bothe  I  have  reduced 
and  translated  this  sayd  booke  in  to  our  Englysshe,  not  ouer 
rude  ne  curyous,  but  in  suche  termes  as  shall  be  vnderstanden 
by  goddys  grace  accordynge  to  my  copye. 


CHAPTER   VIII. 

MODERN   ENGLISH. 

1550,  . 

Up  to  this  time  in  the  nomenclature  of  the  periods 
of  the  English  tongue,  and  in  the  dates  assigned  to 
them,  there  has  been  among  scholars  a  wide  diversity 
of  usage.  In  regard  to  the  latest  period,  however, 
there  is  a  pretty  substantial  agreement.  There  are 
some  who  assign  its  beginning  to  the  year  1500  ;  there 
are  but  very  few  who  place  it  any  earlier.  Many 
refer  it,  as  is  done  here,  to  the  middle  of  the  sixteenth 
century.  There  are  those  by  whom  it  is  specifically 
reckoned  from  the  accession  of  Queen  Elizabeth, 
which  took  place  in  1558. 

No  dates  can  ever  be  given  in  the  history  of  the 
development  of  any  tongue,  against  which  some  ob- 
jections cannot  be  brought.  For  convenience  of  ref- 
erence, a  further  subdivision  of  Modern  English  is 
desirable.  In  this  work  it  will  be  separated  into  the 
three  following  periods.  The  first  extends  from  1550 
to  the  year  of  the  restoration  of  the  Stuarts  in  the  fol- 
lowing century,  that  is,  to  1660  ;  the  second,  from  1660 
to  a  point  in  the  latter  part  of  the  eighteenth  century, 

161 


1 62  English  Language. 

and  in  this  the  year  1 783,  the  date  of  the  ending  of 
the  American  Revolution,  affords  a  convenient  termi- 
nus ;  the  third  period  extends  from  17S3  to  the 
present  time.  Though  the  division  is  made  primarily 
for  convenience  of  reference,  it  will  be  found,  that,  on 
the  whole,  it  is  a  satisfactory  division  for  the  historical 
treatment  of  both  the  language  and  the  literature. 

Two  facts  have  been  pointed  out  in  the  previous 
chapter,  to  which  it  is  now  necessary  to  call  special 
attention.  One  is,  that,  in  highly  cultivated  tongues, 
changes  in  grammar  always  take  place  slowly,  and,  as 
a  general  rule,  only  after  a  long  struggle.  The  other 
is,  that,  in  such  a  tongue,  changes  in  vocabulary,  par- 
ticularly in  the  nature  of  additions  to  it,  meet  with 
no  opposition,  or  with  comparatively  little.  The  reasons 
for  this  condition  of  things  reveal  themselves  after  short 
consideration.  In  early  speech  men  think  mainly  of 
what  they  are  going  to  say,  not  of  the  way  in  which 
they  are  to  say  it ;  and  the  hearer  or  reader  likewise 
cares  so  much  more  for  the  matter,  that  he  does  not 
consciously  give  much  heed  to  the  manner.  In  later 
times  all  this  is  reversed.  The  vehicle  of  the  thought 
has  then  become  a  subject  of  consideration  indepen- 
dent of  die  thought ;  that  is,  language  has  begun  to  be 
studied  for  itself,  as  well  as  for  what  it  conveys.  When 
any  tongue  has  reached  this  point  of  development, 
the  opposition  to  change  in  established  forms  of  ex- 
pression  is  sure  to  become  exceedingly  powerful. 
.Against  such  changes  are  arrayed  all  the  authority  of 
past  usage,  and  all   the   prejudice  in   favor   of  what 


Changes  in  Modern  English.  163 

actually  is  existing,  and  has  been  found  to  do,  though 
perhaps  clumsily,  the  work  demanded  of  it.  In  fact, 
it  may  be  said  that  these  changes  never  succeed  in 
making  themselves  adopted,  until  the  necessity  for 
them  is  imperious  enough  to  override  the  protests  of 
professional  purists,  and  the  feeling  of  dislike  to  inno- 
vation which  becomes  almost  a  second  nature  in  the 
cultivated  users  of  speech. 

True  as  these  statements  are  of  any  tongue,  they 
are  especially  true  of  Modern  English.  The  lexical 
changes  that  have  gone  on  in  it  have  been  numerous. 
Very  few  old  words,  indeed,  once  in  common  use, 
have  been  utterly  lost.  Nor  has  there  been  very 
much  alteration,  comparatively  speaking,  in  the  mean- 
ings of  the  old  words,  though  this  has  been  far  more 
frequent  than  the  actual  disappearance  of  these  words 
themselves.  It  is  the  accessions  to  the  vocabulary 
which  in  this  respect  is  the  most  marked  characteristic 
of  the  modern  speech.  Additions  have  been  made  to 
it  and  are  continuing  to  be  made  to  it  on  the  most 
extensive  scale.  On  the  other  hand,  the  grammatical 
changes  have  been  exceedingly  few.  During  the  past 
four  hundred  years  not  a  single  one  has  taken  place  in 
the  inflection  of  the  noun,  unless  the  assumption  by 
two  or  three  of  the  regular  plural  in  -s1  be  so 
considered.  In  the  inflection  of  the  adjective  there 
could  be  none,  because,  at  the  beginning  of  the  Mod- 
ern English  period,  it  had  already  been  reduced  to 
the  root  form.     It  is  only  in  the  inflection  of  the  pro- 

1  See  page  149. 


164  English  Language. 

noun  and  the  verb  that  certain  changes  can  be  found. 
Of  these  an  account  of  the  most  important  will  be 
given. 

Changes  in  the  Inflection.  —  The  Pronoun. — The 
latter  half  of  the  sixteenth  century  witnessed  the  rise, 
or  at  least  the  general  prevalence,  of  a  confusion  in 
the  use  of  the  nominative  and  objective  cases  of  the 
personal  pronouns  and  of  the  interrogative  and  rela- 
tive who.  /and  me,  we  and  us,  thou  and  thee , ye 
and  you,  he  and  him,  she  and  her,  who  and  whom, 
are  not  unfrequently  used  without  distinction.1  This 
practice  must  have  characterized  the  colloquial 
speech,  because  it  is  especially  noticeable  in  the 
literature  that  represents  it,  the  writings  of  the  Eliza- 
bethan dramatists;  though  the  extent  of  its  preva- 
lence is  largely  disguised  in  modern  reprints  of  their 
works  by  the  silent  changes  of  the  original  made  by 
editors.  The  confusion  in  the  use  of  the  nominative 
and  the  objective  is  more  pronounced  in  the  case  of 
some  of  these  pronouns  than  of  others.  In  the  plural 
of  that  of  the  second  person  it  has  established  itself 
permanently  in  the  speech.  Ye,  in  the  language  of 
Chaucer,  invariably  denotes  the  nominative;  you, 
the  objective;  and  this  usage  will  still  be  found  ob- 
served in  the  authorized  version  of  the  Bible.  But 
in  the  fifteenth  century  the  distinction,  owing  to 
special  reasons,  begin  to  break  down,  and  before 
the  end  of  the  sixteenth,  the  two  forms  were  used  in- 
terchangeably for  each  other.2     At  the  present  time 

1  Set-  Part  II.,  note  to  sec.  117.  2  lb.  sec.  115. 


The  Pronoun  in  Modern  English.        165 

the  original  nominative  ye,  though  occasionally  found, 
is  practically  supplanted  by  the  form  you,  which 
etymologically  belongs  only  to  the  dative  and  to  the 
accusative;  and  in  turn,  ye,  when  now  used  at  all,  is 
more  often  in  the  objective  case  than  in  the  nomina- 
tive. 

But  numerous  phrases  such  as  between  you  and  I, 
it  is  him,  it  is  her,  sprang  up  at  that  period  and 
have  lasted  down  in  colloquial  speech  to  our  own 
day.  To  a  large  extent  most  of  them  have  also  been 
used  in  literature,  and  there  have  been  times  when 
they  have  been  almost  as  common  as  the  strictly 
more  correct  forms.  Etymologically  it  is  me  is  as 
proper  as  it  is  you  ;  but  the  former  expression  gener- 
ally incurs  the  censure  of  modern  grammarians. 
Colloquial  speech  has  likewise  retained  to  a  large 
extent  the  use  of  who  for  whom,  in  questions  such  as 
Who  did  you  go  to  see  ?  or  Who  are  you  talking  about? 
and  others  of  the  same  general  character.  These 
abound  in  the  literature  which  represents  the  lan- 
guage of  conversation  through  all  the  periods  of 
Modern  English.  They  are  still  constantly  heard, 
and  in  some  instances  are  so  much  more  common 
than  the  strictly  correct  expressions,  that  the  use  of 
the  latter  seems  at  times  to  partake  almost  of  the 
nature  of  pedantry. 

Of  all  the  parts  of  speech  the  pronoun  is  the  most 
adverse  to  the  introduction  of  any  new  forms;  yet  to 
its  limited  number  the  close  of  the  sixteenth  century 
saw  the  addition  of  its.     The  genitive  of  //  (originally 


1 66  English  Language. 

hit)  is  etymologically  his  ;  1  but  this  is  also  the  geni- 
tive of  he.  It  was  inevitable  that  confusion  should 
arise  in  the  use  of  this  one  form  applied  equally  to 
an  object  with  life  and  to  one  without  life,  as  soon 
as  the  system  of  grammatical  gender  had  passed  away. 
Confusion  did  arise;  and  expedients  of  all  kinds 
were  resorted  to  for  the  sake  of  securing  clearness. 
Sometimes,  as  is  the  case  in  the  English  Bible,  of  it 
and  thereof  were  used;  as,  for  instance:  — 

Two  cubits  and  a  half  was  the  length  of  it.  —  Exodus  xxxvii.  I. 
Two  cubits  and  a  half  was  the  length  (hereof.  —  lb.  6. 

Sometimes  the  was  employed,  as  in  the  following 
example :  — 

For  we  see  that  it  is  the  manner  of  men  to  scandalize  and 
deprave  that  which  retaineth  the  state  and  virtue,  by  taking  ad- 
vantage of  that  which  is  corrupt  and  degenerate.  —  Bacon,  Ad- 
vancement of  Learning. 

More  frequently  still  it  was  used  itself  as  a  genitive, 
as  follows :  — 

The  hedge-sparrow  fed  the  cuckoo  so  long, 
That  it  had  it  head  bit  off  by  it  young. 

SHAKSPEARE,  King  Lear,  i.  4. 

Finally,  both  the  and  it  were  very  commonly  joined 
with  own,  making  such  phrases  as  the  own  and  it  own. 
The  following  is  an  example:  — 

That  which  groweth  of  it  own  accord  of  thy  harvest,  thou 
shalt  not  reap.  —  Leviticus  xxv.  5  (original  edition). 

1  See  Part  II.,  sec.  103. 


The  Pronoun  in  Modern  English.       167 

In    this   verse    the    Bishop's   Bible   (1572)    had    the 
own. 

The  most  usual  method  to  avoid  ambiguity  was, 
however,  to  change  the  construction  of  the  sentence. 
All  these  difficulties  led  to  the  formation  of  its.  The 
first  record  of  its  appearance  in  print  that  has  yet 
been  found  belongs  to  the  year  1598,  where  it  occurs 
in  one  of  the  definitions  of  an  Italian  and  English 
dictionary,  entitled  "A  Worlde  of  Wordes,"  by  John 
Florio.  Its  infrequency  is  made  conspicuous  by  the 
fact  that  it  appears  but  ten  times  in  Shakspeare's 
works.  With  Ben  Jonson  (1573-1637)  it  is  much 
more  common,  and  it  certainly  occurs  in  the  writings 
of  Decker,  Webster,  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  and 
probably  in  those  of  all  the  dramatists  who  immedi- 
ately followed  Shakspeare.  By  the  middle  of  the 
seventeenth  century  it  had  become  thoroughly  estab- 
lished. Still  the  fact  that  Milton  (161 2-1674)  uses 
it  but  three  times  in  his  poetry,  and  rarely  in  his 
prose,  shows  that  in  the  minds  of  some  there  was  a 
prejudice  still  lingering  against  it.  By  the  end  of 
that  century,  however,  its  comparatively  recent  origin 
seems  to  have  been  entirely  forgotten.  Dryden, 
writing  after  the  Restoration,  even  censures  Ben 
Jonson  for  his  bad  grammar  in  using  his  where  its, 
he  says,  would  have  been  the  appropriate  word. 

Verb.  —  In  the  verb  the  inflectional  changes  have 
been  of  more  importance.  One  of  them  is  purely 
special.  This  is  the  complete  transition  of  the 
form  be  of    the    substantive  verb   from    the    indica- 


1 68  liug/is/i  Language. 

tive  to  the  subjunctive  mood.  In  Elizabethan  Eng- 
lish be  is  found  frequently  alongside  of  are,  at  least 
in  the  third  person  of  the  plural.  The  practice  may 
be  illustrated  by  the  following:  — 

Where  be  thy  brothers? 
Where  be  thy  two  sons?     Wherein  dost  thou  joy? 
Who  sues  and  kneels  and  says,  God  save  the  queen? 
Where  be  the  bending  peers  that  flattered  thee? 
Where  be  the  thronging  troops  that  followed  thee?1 

This  practice  continues  to  be  maintained  in  those 
two  great  conservators  of  archaic  expression,  —  the 
language  of  poetry  and  of  low  life.  In  the  latter  it 
still  occurs  constantly,  in  the  former  occasionally. 
But  be  early  began,  in  literary  prose,  to  be  confined 
to  the  subjunctive  mood;  and  this  has  now  become 
the  established  practice  in  the  ordinary  cultivated 
speech. 

A  second  change  has  been  the  gradual  substitution 
of  -s  for  -th  as  the  termination  of  the  third  person 
singular  of  the  present  indicative.  In  the  Midland 
dialect  of  the  Eastern  counties,  from  which  literary 
English  directly  sprang,  this  part  of  the  verb  ended 
invariably  in  -th.  Such  was  the  practice  of  Chaucer 
and  of  those  of  his  contemporaries,  who  wrote  in  that 
dialect  or  in  the  Southern.  If  any  of  them  occasionally 
Qsed  the  form  in  -s,  it  was  ordinarily  due  to  the  de- 
sire of  accommodating  the  rhyme.  On  the  other  hand, 
this  third  person  regularly  ended  in  -s  in  the  North- 

1  SHAKSPEARE'S  Richard  III.,  act  iv.  scene  4. 


The  Verb  in  Modern  English.  169 

ern  dialect.  From  this  dialect  it  began  to  make  its 
way  into  literary  English  in  the  former  half  of  the 
sixteenth  century.  The  practice  of  employing  it  be- 
came more  and  more  prevalent,  and  by  the  end  of 
that  century  it  is  found,  at  least  in  some  writers,  full 
as  frequently  as  the  ending  in  -///.  The  two  forms 
are  in  fact  used  interchangeably,  as  in  the  following 
line  from  Shakspeare :  — 

"  It  blesseth  him  that  gives  and  him  that  takes." 

Accordingly,  during  most  of  the  first  period  of 
Modern  English  the  terminations  -s  and  -th  flour- 
ished side  by  side,  neither  seeming  to  have  any 
preference  in  popular  estimation;  but,  toward  the 
latter  part  of  it,  the  former  ending  became  the  one 
generally  used,  and  with  the  progress  of  time  gradu- 
ally displaced  the  other.  That  the  termination  -th 
did  not  die  out  entirely  is  probably  due  to  the  influ- 
ence of  the  English  Bible.  Though  the  authorized 
version  of  that  work  appeared  as  late  as  161 1,  the 
language  used  in  it  belonged,  as  is  well  known,  to 
the  early  portion  of  the  preceding  century.  In  it  the 
ending  is  throughout  in  -th  ;  it  never,  for  instance, 
says  he  makes,  but  invariably  he  maketh.  To  this  is 
due  the  preservation  of  the  form,  and  the  additional 
circumstance  that  it  is  now  almost  entirely  confined 
to  the  language  of  religion. 

There  is  nothing  more  supremely  characteristic  of 
our  speech,  especially  in  its  later  periods,  than  the 
extent  to  which  it  has  developed  the  use  of  passive 


170  English  Language. 

formations.  In  this  respect  it  has  gone  far  beyond 
any  other  cultivated  modern  tongue.  The  discussion 
of  this  belongs  mostly  to  syntax,  and  needs  here 
nothing  beyond  simple  reference.  But  the  tendency 
in  this  direction  which  the  language  has  long  mani- 
fested, has  had,  as  one  result,  the  addition  during 
the  past  hundred  years,  of  entirely  new  verb-phrases, 
made  up  of  the  present  and  past  tenses  of  the  substan- 
tive verb,  and  of  past  participles  compounded  with 
being.  The  history  of  this  idiom  presents  a  striking 
instance  of  the  difficulty  in  which  the  decay  of  old 
forms  leaves  a  language,  and  the  ingenuity  it  displays 
in  striking  out  new  paths  to  expression. 

Anglo-Saxon  had  no  special  form  for  the  passive. 
To  represent,  for  instance,  the  present  of  that  voice, 
it  combined  the  past  participle  of  any  particular 
verb  with  the  present  tense  of  either  the  verbs  we  sail 
and  beon,  'to  be,'  or  the  verb  weordan,  'to  become.' 
This  last  was  preserved  in  Early  English  in  the  form 
worthe{ri),  and  like  the  corresponding  German  word 
werden,  was  not  unfrequently  used  to  form  the 
passive;  though  in  our  tongue  it  conveyed  usually  and 
perhaps  invariably  a  future  signification.  The  fol- 
lowing lines  will  exemplify  it:  — 

For  ho  so  doth  wel  here  ■  at  the  daye  of  dome 
Worth  faire  vnderfonge  ■  by-for  God  that  tyme.1 

But  worthe,  in  process  of  time,  disappeared  from  the 

1  For  who  so  doth  well  here,  at  the  day  of  doom 
Shall  be  fairly  received  before  God  that  time. 

Piers  Plowman,  Text  C,  Passus  X.,  line  321. 


New  Passive  Formation.  171 

language,  and  the  tenses  of  the  verb  be  became  the 
only  ones  that  were  combined  with  the  past  partici- 
ple to  express  the  passive  relation. 

This  it  could  easily  do  for  the  present  tense,  when 
the  verb  whose  participle  was  used  denoted  a  feeling 
which  was  in  its  nature  continuous.  '  The  man  is 
loved,  is  feared,  is  admired,'  were  expressions  which 
presented  no  difficulty  or  ambiguity.  They  were 
genuine  present  tenses  of  the  passive  voice.  But, 
when  the  verb  whose  participle  was  used  denoted  a 
simple  act,  the  combination  of  the  passive  participle 
with  the  present  tense  of  the  verb  be  had  the  effect  of 
giving  to  the  full  verbal  phrase,  not  the  sense  of  some- 
thing which  was  then  actually  taking  place,  but  of 
something  which  had  already  taken  place.  It  was  a 
completed,  not  an  existing  action,  which  was  signi- 
fied by  it.  'The  man  is  shot,  is  wounded,  is  killed,' 
could  not  well  be  employed  of  anything  else  than  a 
finished  result,  not  of  an  action  going  on  to  a  possi- 
ble result.  It  was  not  a  present  tense  that  was 
denoted,  but  a  past. 

The  most  common  way  taken  to  avoid  the  difficulty 
was  to  change  the  form  of  expression.  Thus,  in  the 
case  of  the  examples  just  given,  resort  could  be  had 
to  inversion,  and  such  sentences  as  'they  are  shoot- 
ing, are  wounding,  are  killing  the  man,'  could  be 
employed.  But  these  were  often  cumbrous  and  unsat- 
isfactory. Accordingly,  various  circumlocutions  came 
into  use  to  express  the  idea  conveyed  by  the  passive. 
One  of  these  was  to  join  the  present  of  the  verb  be, 


172  English  Lang 11  age. 

to  the  verbal  substantive  in  -ing,  governed  by  the 
preposition  on  or  in.  The  preposition,  in  time,  took 
the  form  of  a,  or,  rather,  was  corrupted  into  it  by 
slovenly  pronunciation,  and  was  then  usually  joined 
directly  to  the  substantive.  In  this  way  arose  ex- 
pressions like  'the  house  is  a-building,'  'the  brass  is 
a-forging, '  'the  dinner  is  a-preparing, '  From  the 
verbal  substantive  finally  fell  away  the  preposition. 
This  left  the  verbal  phrase  designed  to  denote  the 
passive  relation  precisely  the  same  as  the  verbal 
phrase  compounded  of  the  substantive  verb  be  and 
the  present  participle,  which  is  one  of  the  methods  of 
forming  the  present  tense  of  the  active  voice.  The 
transition  which  the  phrase  underwent  can  be  exhib- 
ited by  using  the  first  of  the  illustrations  given.  The 
following  are  the  three  forms :  — 

The  house  is  in  building. 
The  house  is  a-building. 
The  house  is  building. 

It  is  obvious  that  this  method  of  denoting  the  pas- 
sive could  be  carried  out  on  only  a  limited  scale.  It 
was  but  rarely  the  case  that  a  subject  with  life  could 
be  given  to  a  passive  verbal  phrase  of  the  kind.  In 
'the  house  is  building,'  and  'the  man  is  building,'  it 
is  obvious  at  a  glance  that  the  idea  conveyed  by 
is  building  is  essentially  distinct.  In  the  one  case  is 
building  is  in  the  active  voice;  in  the  other  it  is  in 
the  passive.  Nor  would  the  difficulty  have  been 
removed,  had  the  preposition  been  retained.     'The 


New  Passive  Formation.  173 

man  is  a-eating'  could  not  by  any  possibility  be 
looked  upon  as  a  passive  formation,  and  made  to 
mean  that  the  subject  of  the  verb  was  undergoing  the 
process  of  being  eaten. 

Some  other  method  of  expression  was  felt  to  be 
necessary.  Accordingly,  in  the  eighteenth  century,  a 
new  verb-phrase,  made  up  of  the  substantive  verb 
and  the  past  participle  compounded  with  being, 
came  into  use.  We  see  it  exemplified  in  the  com- 
mon example  'the  house  is  being  built,'  in  which  the 
new  inflection  is  made  up  of  is,  and  the  compound 
past  participle  being  built.  Like  the  forms  com- 
pounded with  do,  these  phrases  were  confined  to  the 
present  and  preterite  tenses.  Their  employment 
speedily  became  common.  Though  they  met  with 
vigorous  opposition,  they  were  found  so  clear  in 
meaning,  and  so  convenient  in  practice,  that  opposi- 
tion was  of  no  avail.  They  have  been  adopted  by 
every  living  writer  of  repute,  and  may  now  be  con- 
sidered thoroughly  established.  Double  methods  of 
expression,  like  'the  house  is  building,'  and  'the 
house  is  being  built,'  will  in  some  cases  doubtless 
continue  to  exist  side  by  side  for  a  long  time  to 
come ;  but  no  new  ones  of  the  former  kind  will  make 
their  way  into  general  use,  while  there  is  no  percep- 
tible limit  to  the  spread  of  those  of  the  latter. 

These  constitute  the  important  inflectional  changes 
that  have  taken  place  in  Modern  English.  Certain 
inflections,  indeed,  have  died  out  entirely  during 
this  period,  such  as  the  use  of  his  as  the  genitive  of 


174  English  Language. 

it,  and  of  the  plurals  of  the  present  tense  ending  in 
-tii,  in  -th,  or  in  -s  ;  but  these  at  the  very  beginning 
of  the  period  were  already  on  the  point  of  extinction. 
There  are  other  grammatical  changes,  mostly  syntacti- 
cal in  their  nature,  into  which  the  limits  of  this  work 
do  not  suffer  us  to  enter.  The  character  of  them 
may  be  gathered  from  one  or  two  illustrations.  The 
name  of  the  subjunctive  mood  still  continues  to  exist 
in  our  tongue;  but  its  employment  as  conveying  any 
shade  of  meaning  distinct  from  that  of  the  indica- 
tion has  largely  passed  away.  This  has  arisen  mainly 
from  the  fact  that  the  forms  of  the  one  mood  are  in 
great  measure  the  same  as  those  of  the  other.  As  a 
result,  the  distinction  that  once  prevailed  in  the  use  of 
the  two  gradually  disappeared,  and  when  the  subjunc- 
tive is  now  employed,  the  indicative  can  be  generally 
substituted  for  it  without  affecting  the  meaning.  So 
also  in  Early  English  the  double  negative  strengthened 
the  negation.  Thus  Chaucer,  to  emphasize  the  cour- 
tesy of  the  Knight,  puts  four  negatives  into  the  two 
following  lines:  — 

He  nevere  yet  no  vileynye  '  tie  sayde 
In  al  his  lyf  unto  no  maner  wight.'2 

In  the  first  period  of  Modern  English  this  use  of 
the  double  negative  to  strengthen  the  negation  was 
abandoned  under  the  influence  of  the  Latin.  In 
fact  it  can  almost  be  said  that  the  use  of  the  double 
negative  itself  has  been  given  up,  for  it  is  now  rarely 

1  Discourteous  language.  2  No  sort  of  person. 


Vocabulary  of  Modern  English.  175 

employed  -even  to  indicate  an  affirmative.  Still 
though  frowned  upon  by  the  cultivated  speech,  the 
original  idiom  exhibits  all  its  early  vitality  in  the 
language  of  low  life.  Questions  like  these,  con- 
nected with  the  history  of  usage,  would  require  a 
special  work  for  their  proper  discussion. 

Changes  in  the  Vocabulary.  —  It  is  in  the  vocabu- 
lary that  the  greatest  changes  have  taken  place,  and 
are  still  taking  place,  in  Modern  English;  though 
they  have  never  been  of  such  a  kind  and  extent  as 
to  affect  radically  the  character  and  continuity  of  the 
speech.  A  certain  number  of  words,  such,  for  illustra- 
tion as  ear,  'to  plough,'  leasing,  'a  lie,'  have  dropped 
out  of  use;  but  in  most  instances  these  terms  had 
already  begun  at  the  beginning  of  the  period  to  assume 
a  somewhat  archaic  character.  In  general,  it  may  be 
said  that  the  losses  in  words  have  been  comparatively 
slight,  while  the  gains  have  been  numerous.  At  the 
same  time,  these  gains  are  far  from  having  been 
spread  equally  over  the  history  of  the  modern  tongue. 
The  period  from  1550  to  1660  is  especially  remark- 
able for  the  vast  number  of  new  terms  that  came  into 
the  language,  though  the  movement  in  that  direction 
had  begun  some  time  before  the  middle  of  the  six- 
teenth century.  Much  the  largest  proportion  of 
these  new  words  came  from  the  Latin,  but  to  some 
extent  they  were  borrowed  from  the  Greek,  and  from 
the  modern  tongues,  the  French,  the  Spanish,  and 
the  Italian. 

The  disposition    to   introduce  these  foreign  words 


176  English  Language. 

had  manifested  itself,  as  we  have  said,  in  the  early 
part  of  the  sixteenth  century  ;  but  it  did  not  get  under 
full  headway  until  the  latter  half.  It  was  a  natural  re- 
sult of  the  causes  then  in  operation.  It  was  a  time 
of  great  activity  and  intense  excitement.  The  intel- 
lectual impulse  which  had  been  set  in  motion  by  the 
revival  of  letters  was  still  in  its  first  vigor.  It  had 
rent  the  Christian  Church  into  two  hostile  camps, 
using  against  each  other,  in  defence  of  their  dogmas, 
all  the  resources  of  the  common  learning  of  the  past 
and  the  new  learning  that  was  coming  in.  A  world 
hitherto  unknown  had  been  laid  open  to  view.  Fresh 
explorations  were  constantly  bringing  to  light  fresh  facts. 
The  rapid  increase  of  knowledge  and  of  the  develop- 
ment of  thought  needed  new  words  for  their  expres- 
sion ;  and  new  words  were  accordingly  introduced 
without  stint  or  hesitation.  The  readiest  resource  at 
that  time  of  the  English-speaking  race  was  the  Latin ; 
and  there  was  scarcely  a  single  author  of  that  period 
who  did  not  feel  himself  at  perfect  liberty  to  coin 
from  it  any  terms  which  seemed  to  him  to  express 
more  exactly  the  ideas  he  sought  to  convey.  The 
consequence  was  that  vast  multitudes  of  words  came 
then  into  our  tongue,  numbers  of  which  have  not  as  yet 
been  collected  into  our  dictionaries,  and  perhaps,  in 
some  cases,  have  never  had  any  existence  outside  of 
the  written  speech.  Certainly  many  of  them  never 
came  into  general  use,  and  it  is  not  unlikely  that  no 
small  proportion  of  them  were  confined  to  the  indi- 
vidual   authors  who    invented  them.     In    conformity 


Vocabulary  of  Modern  English.  ijy 

with  the  terminology  previously  used,  this  influx  is 
often  called  the  "  Latin  of  the  Fourth  Period." 

But,  at  the  time  of  the  restoration  of  the  Stuarts,  the 
intellectual  impulse  above  mentioned  had  practically 
spent  its  force.  The  period  from  1660  to  1783  was  a 
critical  rather  than  a  creative  age  ;  and  it  added  but  a 
small  amount  to  the  English  vocabulary.  This  state 
of  things,  however,  was  again  broken  up  towards  the 
close  of  the  eighteenth  century.  A  great  political  and 
humanitarian  revolution  was  in  progress  throughout 
Europe.  It  was  attended,  not  merely  with  a  social 
upheaval,  but  with  a  general  intellectual  movement, 
which  presents  many  striking  resemblances  to  that  of 
the  sixteenth  century.  One  direct  result  was  the 
introduction  of  a  vast  number  of  new  words,  which 
the  rapid  advance  in  every  department  of  human 
investigation  has  rendered  necessary.  Some  of  these, 
to  be  sure,  are  nothing  but  revivals  of  terms  which  had 
previously  been  brought  in  during  the  sixteenth  and 
seventeenth  centuries,  but  had  fallen  into  disuse ;  but 
much  the  larger  proportion  of  them  are  entirely  new 
coinages.  Especially  is  this  true  in  the  manifold 
departments  of  modern  science,  in  which  every  ad- 
vance gives  birth  to  a  number  of  hitherto  unknown 
words.  These,  in  most  instances,  are  taken  from  the 
Greek.  To  a  large  extent,  they  are  purely  technical 
in  their  character ;  but,  with  the  progress  of  the  arts, 
a  certain  number  are  sure  to  pass  into  general  circula- 
tion. 

There   is    still    another    characteristic   which    has 


178  English  Language. 

marked  the  later  development  of  the  English  vocabu- 
lary. During  the  past  hundred  years,  our  tongue  has 
shown  a  decided  tendency  to  go  back  to  its  older 
forms,  and  to  revive  a  large  number  of  words  that 
have  been  kept  alive  only  in  the  provincial  dialects. 
This  is  a  tendency  which  the  constantly  increasing 
attention  paid  to  the  study  of  English  in  its  earlier 
stages  has  naturally  accelerated.  The  result  is  that 
many  terms  which  were  once  known  to  but  few  are 
now  familiar  to  all.  The  language  of  the  sixteenth 
and  even  of  the  fourteenth  century  is  much  nearer  to 
us  than  it  was  to  the  men  of  the  eighteenth  century. 
Its  words  and  phrases  require  far  fewer  explanations. 
This  is  a  condition  of  things  which  will  be  apt  to  char- 
acterize more  and  more  the  future.  Under  any  cir- 
cumstances, the  continued  and  indeed  ever-increasing 
popularity  of  the  great  writers  of  Modern  English  is 
sufficient  to  prevent  the  terms  they  use  from  becom- 
ing obsolete,  or  the  language  itself  to  wander  far  away 
from  the  forms  which  they  have  made  familiar. 

The  fact  of  English  possessing,  to  a  large  extent,  a 
double  vocabulary  —  one  composed  of  Teutonic,  the 
other  of  Romance  words  —  has  given  a  marked  char- 
acter to  the  literature  of  various  epochs.  At  any 
time,  to  be  sure,  a  difference  of  terms  employed  will 
always  be  due  to  a  difference  of  subject.  It  has 
already  been  pointed  out,  that  the  language  of  reason- 
ing and  philosophy,  of  intellectual  processes  of  any 
kind,  will  necessarily  make  extensive  use  of  the  Latin 
element ;  while,  on  the  contrary,  the  language  of  feel- 


Vocabulary  of  Modern  English.  179 

ing,  in  whatever  shape  manifested,  will  be  mainly 
taken  from  the  Teutonic  element.  But,  even  in  treat- 
ing of  subjects  of  a  similar  character,  different  writers 
living  at  the  same  time  will  vary  widely  in  their  choice 
of  words.  Moreover,  it  may  be  said  that  the  literary 
speech  has  shown  a  constant  tendency  to  oscillate 
between  the  two  vocabularies.  During  the  first  pe- 
riod, from  1550  to  1660,  the  Latin  influence  was 
plainly  predominant.  It  affected,  not  alone  the  words, 
but  also  the  construction.  The  involved  and  stately 
sentences  of  Bacon,  Hooker,  and  Milton,  belong  to  a 
species  of  writing  which  is  no  longer  cultivated  ;  in- 
deed, it  is  only  in  the  dramatists  of  the  Elizabethan 
age,  that  anything  closely  resembling  modern  prose 
can  then  be  found. 

During  the  second  period  — that  between  1660  and 
1 783  —  the  two  elements  of  the  vocabulary  were,  in 
the  main,  harmoniously  blended,  though  during  the 
latter  part  of  it,  under  the  influence  of  Johnson,  a 
temporary  reaction  occasionally  manifested  itself  in 
favor  of  the  Latin.  But  even  this  speedily  passed 
away.  On  the  other  hand,  during  the  last  period  of 
Modern  English,  and  especially  at  the  present  time,  a 
reaction  in  favor  of  the  Teutonic  element  has  set  in. 
In  spite  of  the  immense  accessions  to  the  vocabu- 
lary from  the  classical  tongues,  due  to  the  progress  of 
science,  it  is  probably  true  that  the  proportion  of 
words  of  native  origin  used  by  popular  writers,  as  con- 
trasted with  words  of  foreign  origin,  is  greater  now 
than  at  any  time  during  the  past  three  hundred  years. 


i8o  English  Language. 

But  the  history  of  the  language  shows  that  there  is 
nothing  permanent  about  any  of  these  movements, 
whether  in  favor  of  the  Teutonic  or  of  the  Romance 
element  of  our  tongue.  Both  are  essential  to  the 
speech  in  its  present  form,  and  a  marked  preference 
for  the  one,  to  the  exclusion  of  the  other,  can,  at 
best,  be  never  anything  more  than  a  temporary 
fashion. 

Settlement  of  the  Orthography.  —  During  the 
Modern  English  period  the  orthography  has  become 
fixed.  The  form  of  the  word  remains  the  same, 
though  it  maybe  pronounced  in  half  a  dozen  different 
ways.  Originally  this  was  not  the  case.  In  the  earlier 
periods  of  the  language,  the  orthography  may  fairly  be 
described  as  phonetic,  as  far,  at  least,  as  it  could  be 
made  such  with  the  imperfect  means  furnished  by  the 
Latin  alphabet  for  the  representation  of  English  sounds. 
It  continued  to  retain  this  character  even  after  it  had 
been  affected  by  the  orthography  of  the  Old  French. 
Accordingly,  each  one  tried  to  spell  as  he  pronounced  ; 
and,  as  pronunciation  varied  in  different  parts  of  the 
country,  the  spelling  necessarily  varied  with  it. 

Many  causes  have  contributed  to  bringing  about  the 
present  unphonetic  character  of  the  English  tongue.  A 
most  important  factor  in  giving  it  fixedness  of  form 
was  the  influence  exerted  by  the  art  of  printing,  in 
the  practice  of  which  uniformity  of  spelling  is  a 
matter  of  much  consequence.  Still  this  uniformity 
was  a  result  very  gradually  reached.  In  the  progress 
towards    the    modern    orthography    the    seventeenth 


Orthography  of  Modern  English.         1 8 1 

century  shows  a  clear  advance  over  the  sixteenth. 
Even  in  the  early  part  of  it  the  majority  of  words  are 
spelled  as  they  are  now.  In  many  variations  exist 
from  that  at  present  universally  found,  as  well  as 
between  that  employed  at  the  time  itself  in  different 
printing-houses  or  by  different  writers.  As  illustra- 
tions of  the  former,  the  final  -e  frequently  appeared  in 
many  words  from  which  it  is  now  discarded,  as,  for 
-example,  doe,  finde,  beene,  unknowne,  heate,  kinde, 
sootie,  againe.  The  e  of  the  genitive  and  plural  was 
often  retained,  as  in  yeares,  dreamcs,  mindes,  houres. 
The  present  final  -y  is  frequently  represented  by  ie,  as 
easie  and  busie.  Numerous  other  examples  could  be 
cited  of  variations  from  the  orthography  now  em- 
ployed ;  but  these  are  sufficient  to  indicate,  in  a  gen- 
eral way,  their  nature. 

The  latter  part  of  the  seventeenth  century  shows 
the  progress  towards  the  modern  form  very  plainly. 
At  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century  the  present 
orthography  was  pretty  nearly  established  ;  though,  in 
regard  to  numerous  words,  there  was  still  wide  diversity 
of  usage.  It  was  not  until  after  the  publication  of  Dr. 
Johnson's  dictionary,  in  1755,  that  the  existing  spell- 
ing can  be  said  to  have  become  universally  received. 
That  given  by  him  to  words  has  been  the  one  gener- 
ally followed  by  all  later  writers.  The  variations  that 
have  taken  place  in  the  orthography  since  his  time 
have  been  neither  numerous  nor  important.  One  of 
the  most  significant,  for  instance,  though  in  itself  really 
insignificant,  is  the  general   dropping  of  the  final  -k 


1 82  English  Language. 

from  such  words  as  domestick,  musick,  publick,  as  they 
were  authorized  in  his  dictionary.  Worse  than  all,  a 
deference  has  sprung  up  for  our  present  spelling  which 
is  not  justified  by  anything  in  its  character.  Orthog- 
raphy was  a  matter  about  which  Johnson  was  totally 
incompetent  to  decide.  Yet,  largely  in  consequence 
of  the  respect  and  even  reverence  still  paid  to  that 
which  he  saw  fit  to  employ,  the  spelling  of  English 
continues  to  be  probably  the  most  vicious  to  be  found 
in  any  cultivated  tongue  that  ever  existed.  With  a 
number  of  sounds  for  the  same  sign,  and  again  with  a 
number  of  signs  for  the  same  sound,  it  is  in  no  sense 
a  guide  to  pronunciation,  which  is  its  only  proper 
office.  Even  for  derivation  —  an  office  for  which  it 
was  never  designed  —  it  is  almost  equally  worthless, 
save  in  the  case  of  words  of  direct  Latin  origin. 

Wide  Extension  of  English.  —  During  the  modern 
period  of  its  history,  English  has  been  carried  over 
a  large  share  of  the  habitable  globe,  and  the  number 
of  those  who  speak  it  is  constantly  increasing.  Under 
conditions  that  existed  in  former  times,  this  fact  could 
be  followed  but  by  one  result.  Different  tongues 
would  have  sprung  up  in  different  countries,  varying 
from  each  other,  and  varying  more  or  less  from  their 
common  mother ;  and  the  differences  would  have 
constantly  tended  to  become  more  marked  with  the 
progress  of  time.  But  there  are  two  agencies  now  in 
existence  that  will  be  more  than  sufficient  to  prevent 
any  such  result.  These  are,  first,  the  common  pos- 
session of  a  great  literature  accessible  to  men  of  every 


Future  of  the  English   Tongue.  183 

rank  and  every  country  ;  and,  secondly,  the  constant 
interchange  of  population  that  results  from  the  facility 
of  modern  communication.  Joined  to  these  is  the 
steadily  increasing  attention  paid  to  the  diffusion  of 
education,  the  direct  effect  of  which  is  to  destroy  dia- 
lectic differences,  and  make  the  literary  speech  the  one 
standard  to  which  all  conform.  These  agencies  become 
year  by  year  more  wide-reaching  and  controlling.  The 
forces  that  tend  to  bring  about  unity  are  now  so  much 
more  powerful  than  those  that  tend  to  bring  about 
diversity,  and  the  former  are  so  constantly  gaining  in 
strength,  that  deviation  on  any  large  scale  between  the 
language  as  spoken  in  Great  Britain  and  in  its  Colonies, 
and  in  America,  can  now  be  looked  upon  as  hardly 
possible. 

This  brings  us  directly  to  the  discussion  of  a  ques- 
tion with  which  the  general  history  of  English  may 
properly  conclude  :  What  is  to  be  the  future  of  our 
tongue  ?  Is  it  steadily  tending  to  become  corrupt,  as 
constantly  asserted  by  so  many  who  are  laboriously 
devoting  their  lives  to  preserve  it  in  its  purity?  The 
fact  need  not  be  denied,  if  by  it  is  meant,  that,  within 
certain  limits,  the  speech  is  always  moving  away  from 
established  usage.  The  history  of  language  is  the  his- 
tory of  corruptions.  The  purest  of  speakers  uses  every 
day,  with  perfect  propriety,  words  and  forms,  which, 
looked  at  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  past,  are  im- 
proper, if  not  scandalous.  But  the  blunders  of  one 
age  become  good  usage  in  the  following,  and,  in  proc- 
ess of  time,  grow  to  be  so  consecrated  by  custom  and 


184  Engl  is  J i  Language. 

consent,  that  a  return  to  practices  theoretically  correct 
would  seem  like  a  return  to  barbarism.  While  this 
furnishes  no  excuse  for  lax  and  slovenly  methods  of 
expression,  it  is  a  guaranty  that  the  indulgence  in 
them  by  some,  or  the  adoption  of  them  by  all,  will  not 
necessarily  be  attended  by  any  serious  injury  to  the 
tongue.  Vulgarity  and  tawdriness  and  affectation,  and 
numerous  other  characteristics  which  are  manifested 
by  the  users  of  language,  are  bad  enough  ;  but  it  is  a 
gross  error  to  suppose  that  they  have  of  themselves 
any  permanently  serious  effect  upon  the  purity  of 
national  speech.  They  are  results  of  imperfect  train- 
ing ;  and,  while  the  great  masters  continue  to  be 
admired  and  read  and  studied,  they  are  results  that 
will  last  but  for  a  time. 

The  causes  which  bring  about  the  decline  of  a  lan- 
guage are,  in  truth,  of  an  entirely  different  type.  It 
is  not  the  use  of  particular  words  or  idioms,  it  is  not 
the  adoption  of  peculiar  rhetorical  devices,  that  con- 
tribute either  to  the  permanent  well-being  or  corrup- 
tion of  any  tongue.  These  are  the  mere  accidents  of 
speech,  the  fashion  of  a  time  which  passes  away  with 
the  causes  that  gave  it  currency.  Far  back  of  these 
lie  the  real  sources  of  decay.  Language  is  no  better 
and  no  worse  than  the  men  who  speak  it.  The  terms 
of  which  it  is  composed  have  no  independent  vitality 
in  themselves  :  it  is  the  meaning  which  the  men  who 
use  them  put  into  them,  that  gives  them  all  their 
power.  It  is  never  language  in  itself  that  becomes 
weak  or  corrupt :  it  is  only  when  those  who  use  it 


Future  of  tlte  English    Tongue.  1S5 

become  weak  or  corrupt,  that  it  shares  in  their  degra- 
dation. Nothing  but  respect  need  be  felt  or  expressed 
for  that  solicitude  which  strives  to  maintain  the  purity 
of  speech  ;  yet  when  unaccompanied  by  a  far-reaching 
knowledge  of  its  history,  but,  above  all,  by  a  thorough 
comprehension  of  the  principles  which  underlie  the 
growth  of  language,  efforts  of  this  kind  are  as  certain 
to  be  full  of  error  as  they  are  lacking  in  result.  There 
has  never  been  a  time  in  the  history  of  Modern  Eng- 
lish in  which  there  have  not  been  men  who  fancied 
that  they  foresaw  its  decay.  From  the  sixteenth  to 
the  nineteenth  century  on,  our  literature,  whenever  it 
touches  upon  the  character  of  the  vehicle  by  which 
it  is  conveyed,  is  full  of  the  severest  criticism  ;  and 
its  pages  are  crowded  with  unavailing  protests  against 
the  introduction  of  that  which  now  it  hardly  seems 
possible  for  us  to  do  without,  and,  along  with  these, 
with  mournful  complaints  of  the  degeneracy  of  the 
present,  and  with  melancholy  forebodings  for  the 
future.  So  it  always  has  been ;  so  it  is  always  likely 
to  be.  Yet  the  real  truth  is,  that  the  language  can  be 
safely  trusted  to  take  care  of  itself,  if  the  men  who 
speak  it  take  care  of  themselves  ;  for  with  their  degree 
of  development,  of  cultivation,  and  of  character,  it 
will  always  be  found  in  absolute  harmony. 

In  fact,  it  is  not  from  the  agencies  that  are  com- 
monly supposed  to  be  corrupting  that  our  speech  at 
the  present  time  suffers;  it  is  in  much  more  danger 
from  ignorant  efforts  made  to  preserve  what  is  called 
its  purity.     Rules  have  been  and  still  are  laid  down 


1 86  English  Language. 

for  the  use  of  it,  which  never  had  any  existence  out- 
side of  the  minds  of  grammarians  and  verbal  critics. 
By  these  rules,  so  far  as  they  are  observed,  freedom  of 
expression  is  cramped,  idiomatic  peculiarity  destroyed, 
and  false  tests  for  correctness  set  up,  which  give  the 
ignorant  opportunity  to  point  out  supposed  error  in 
others  ;  while  the  real  error  lies  in  their  own  imperfect 
acquaintance  with  the  best  usage.  One  illustration 
will  be  sufficient  of  multitudes  that  might  be  cited. 
There  is  a  rule  of  Latin  syntax  that  two  or  more  sub- 
stantives joined  by  a  copulative  require  the  verb  to  be 
in  the  plural.  This  has  been  foisted  into  the  grammar 
of  English,  of  which  it  is  no  more  true  than  it  is  of 
modern  German.  There  is  nothing  in  the  usage  of 
the  past,  from  the  very  earliest  times,  to  authorize  it ; 
nothing  in  the  usage  of  the  present  to  justify  it,  except 
so  far  as  the  rule  itself  has  tended  to  make  general 
the  practice  it  imposes.  The  grammar  of  English,  as 
exhibited  in  the  utterances  of  its  best  writers  and 
speakers,  has,  from  the  very  earliest  period,  allowed 
the  widest  discretion  as  to  the  use  either  of  the  singu- 
lar or  the  plural  in  such  cases.  The  importation  and 
imposition  of  rules  foreign  to  its  idiom,  like  the  one 
just  mentioned,  does  more  to  hinder  the  free  develop- 
ment of  the  tongue,  and  to  dwarf  its  freedom  of  ex- 
pression, than  the  widest  prevalence  of  slovenliness  of 
speech,  or  of  affectation  of  style  ;  for  these  latter  are 
always  temporary  in  their  character,  and  are  sure  to  be 
left  behind  by  the  advance  in  popular  cultivation,  or 
forgotten  through  the  change  in  popular  taste. 


Future  of  the  English   Tongue.  187 

It  cannot  indeed  be  laid  down  too  emphatically 
that  it  is  not  the  business  of  grammarians  or  scholars 
to  decide  what  is  good  usage.  Their  function  is  lim- 
ited to  ascertaining  and  recording  it.  This  can  only 
be  done  by  the  prolonged  and  careful  study  of  the 
language,  as  it  has  been  employed  by  its  best  authors. 
It  is  they  who  settle  by  their  practice  what  is  correct 
or  incorrect,  and  not  the  arbitrary  preferences  or 
prejudices  of  writers  on  usage  or  grammar.  These 
constantly  assume  an  authority  to  which  they  are  not 
entitled.  Ignorant  of  their  own  ignorance,  they  con- 
demn because  they  fail  to  understand.  The  grammar 
of  different  periods  does,  it  is  true,  vary  to  some  ex- 
tent. What  is  right  at  one  time  may  become  wrong 
at  another.  Still,  as  a  general  rule,  he  who  studies 
faithfully  the  great  masters  of  English  literature  need 
rarely  feel  any  hesitation  about  adopting  the  words  or 
phrases  or  expressions  which  have  received  the  sanc- 
tion of  their  usage. 

Of  the  languages  of  Christendom,  English  is  the  one 
now  spoken  by  far  the  largest  number  of  persons ; 
and  from  present  appearances  there  would  seem  to 
be  but  little  limit  to  its  possible  extension.  Yet  that 
it  or  any  other  tongue  will  ever  become  a  universal 
language  is  so  much  more  than  doubtful,  that  it  may  be 
called  impossible  ;  and,  even  were  it  possible,  it  is  a 
question  if  it  would  be  desirable.  However  that  may 
be,  its  spread  will  depend  in  the  future,  as  it  has 
depended  in  the  past,  not  so  much  upon  the  charac- 


1 88  Eug/is/i  Language-. 

ter  of  the  language  itself,  as  upon  the  character  of  the 
men  who  speak  it.     It  is  not  necessarily  because  it  is 
in  reality  superior  to  other  tongues,  that  it  has  become 
more  widely  extended  than  they,  but  because  it  has 
been  and  still  is  the  speech  of  two  great  nations  which 
have    been   among    the    foremost   in  civilization  and 
power,  the  most  greedy  in  the  grasping  of  territory, 
the  most  successful  in  the  planting  of  colonies.     But 
as    political   reasons    have    lifted  the  tongue  into  its 
present  prominence,  so  in  the  future  to  political  rea- 
sons  will    be    owing    its   progress    or  decay.      Thus, 
behind    everything    that    tends    to    the    extension    of 
language,   lie    the    material    strength,  the   intellectual 
development   and    the  moral  character,  which  make 
the  users  of  a  language  worthy  enough  and  powerful 
enough  to  impose  it  upon  others.     No  speech  can  do 
more  than  express  the  ideas  of  those  who  employ  it 
at  the  time.     It  cannot  live  upon  its  past  meanings,  or 
upon   the    past  conceptions  of  great  men  that  have 
been  recorded  in  it,  any  more  than  the  race   which 
uses  it  can  live  upon  its  past  glory  or  its  past  achieve- 
ments.    Proud,  therefore,  as  we  may  now  well  be  of 
our  tongue,  we  may  rest  assured,  that,  if  it  ever  attain 
to  universal  sovereignty,  it  will  do  so  only  because  the 
ideas  of  the  men  who  speak  it  are  fit  to  become  the 
ruling  ideas  of  the  world,  and  the  men  themselves  are 
strong  enough  to  carry  them  over  the  world  ;  and  that, 
in  the  last  analysis,  depends,  like  everything  else,  upon 
the  development  of  the  individual ;  depends,  not  upon 
the   territory  we  buy  or  steal,  not  upon  the  gold  we 


Future  of  the  English    Tongue.  189 

mine,  or  the  grain  we  grow,  but  upon  the  men  we 
produce.  If  we  fail  there,  no  national  greatness, 
however  splendid  to  outward  view,  can  be  anything 
but  temporary  and  illusory ;  and,  when  once  national 
greatness  disappears,  no  past  achievement  in  literature, 
however  glorious,  will  perpetuate  our  language  as  a  liv- 
ing speech,  though  they  may  help  for  a  while  to  retard 
its  decay. 


Part    II. 
HISTORY    OF    INFLECTIONS. 


CHAPTER   I. 

SOME  FEATURES  COMMON  TO  ALL  THE  TEUTONIC 

TONGUES. 

i.  He  who  contrasts  the  English  of  the  Anglo-Saxon 
period  with  the  English  of  to-day  is  at  once  struck  by 
the  difference  between  the  ancient  and  the  modern 
tongue  in  respect  to  vocabulary  and  inflection.  It 
is  with  the  latter  alone  that  we  have  to  do  in  the 
following  pages.  Its  history  is  largely  a  record  of 
abandonment  of  forms  once  deemed  necessary,  and 
of  confusion  in  the  use  of  those  that  were  retained. 
Nevertheless,  it  would  be  a  great  error  to  suppose  that 
loss  or  change  of  inflection  is  especially  characteristic 
of  the  later  life  of  our  language  as  distinguished  from 
the  earlier.  Even  when  our  speech  made  its  first  ap- 
pearance in  a  few  written  monuments  of  the  seventh 
and  eighth  centuries,  it  had  then  already  given  up 
much  that  once  belonged  to  it.  The  stripping  of 
inflection  from  the  English  tongue  had  begun  long 
before  any  productions  which  have  been  handed  down 
had  been  composed  in  it.  Many  of  the  irregular  forms 
which  are  still  found  at  this  day  owe  their  existence, 
and  their  apparently  anomalous  character,  to  changes 

»93 


194  English  Language. 

that  had  taken  place  before  a  word  of  our  language 
had  been  committed  to  writing  ;  in  periods,  indeed, 
as  to  which  it  is  absolutely  unknown  where  even  the 
men  were  living  who  spoke  our  speech. 

2.  But,  without  the  aid  of  written  monuments,  how 
can  we  know  this  to  be  a  fact?  How  can  we  be  sure 
that  forms  once  existed  in  our  tongue  which  have 
never  been  preserved  in  its  literature  ?  The  answer 
to  these  questions  not  only  renders  necessary  an  ac- 
count of  the  characteristics  of  the  inflection  prevailing  in 
the  earliest  period  of  English,  but,  to  some  extent,  also 
an  examination  of  certain  features  which  are  common 
to  it  with  the  other  Teutonic  tongues.  Its  precise 
relations  to  them,  the  grammatical  peculiarities  that 
distinguish  them  all,  must  be  clearly  comprehended, 
before  the  student  can  understand  the  reason  of  the 
general  tendencies  which  have  manifested  themselves 
in  the  history  of  our  inflection,  or  the  origin  of  the 
particular  anomalies  which  are  still  retained  in  it. 

3.  It  has  already  been  stated  that  English  is  a  mem- 
ber of  a  family  of  languages,  called  the  Teutonic  or 
Germanic,  which  itself  forms  one  branch  of  a  still 
larger  family,  termed  the  Indo-European,  or  the 
Aryan.1  All  the  tongues  belonging  to  the  latter  have 
come  from  the  same  source.  They  are,  therefore, 
more  or  less  remotely  allied  to  one  another.  But  no 
record  of  this  one  primitive  Indo-European  speech 
exists,  no  monuments  of  it  have  been  preserved,  from 
which  its  words  and  forms  can  be  gathered.     We  are, 

1  See  introductory  chapter. 


The  Primitive   Teutonic  Speech.         195 

therefore,  under  the  necessity  of  making  out  what 
these  words  and  forms  must  have  been,  by  a  compari- 
son, in  accordance  with  certain  scientific  principles,  of 
the  languages  that  have  been  derived  from  this  un- 
known original  tongue.  Words  and  forms  which  are 
common  to  all  its  descendants,  it  is  very  safe  to  say, 
must  have  existed  in  the  parent-speech.  In  most 
cases  they  are  naturally  more  changed  and  disguised 
in  appearance,  the  more  remote  they  are  from  it  in 
time.  Looked  at  from  this  point  of  view,  it  may  be 
said  that,  as  a  general  rule,  the  older  the  tongue,  the 
closer  is  the  resemblance  it  is  likely  to  bear  to  the 
original  from  which  it  came.  Accordingly,  Sanskrit, 
with  a  literature  going  back  to  at  least  fifteen  hundred, 
and  probably  two  thousand,  years  before  Christ,  is 
conceded  to  be  much  nearer,  on  the  whole,  in  its 
forms  and  inflections,  to  the  primitive  Indo-European 
than  any  of  its  numerous  sister-languages. 

4.  A  similar  statement  is  true  of  that  branch  of 
the  Indo-European  family  to  which  English  belongs. 
There  are  in  existence  no  monuments  of  the  primitive 
Teutonic  speech  from  which  all  the  members  of  the 
branch  have  descended.  The  words  and  forms  con- 
stituting it  can  only  be  made  out,  in  the  same  manner 
as  in  the  case  of  the  primitive  Indo-European,  by  a 
scientific  comparison  of  those  found  in  the  derived 
tongues.  Necessarily,  the  older  languages  of  this 
branch,  of  which  monuments  have  been  handed  down, 
are  of  the  first  importance.  Of  these  the  Gothic, 
whose  scanty  literature  goes  back  to  the  fourth  cen- 


196  EnglisJi  Language. 

tury  after  Christ,  must  be  regarded  as  presenting,  on 
the  whole,  much  the  nearest  likeness  to  that  theoreti- 
cal primitive  Teutonic  speech  which  is  the  common 
parent  of  all.  But  the  other  older  languages  belonging 
to  this  sub-family  are  also  of  importance.  These  are 
the  Old  Norse,  the  Old  High  German,  and  the  Low- 
Germanic  tongues,  the  Low  Prankish,  the  Old  Saxon, 
the  Old  Frisian,  and  that  English  of  the  earliest  period 
which  has  had  given  to  it  in  ordinary  usage  the  name 
of  Anglo-Saxon. 

5.  All  these  tongues  had  many  things  in  com- 
mon. In  particular,  loss  of  inflection  not  only  charac- 
terized the  primitive  Teutonic  as  compared  with  the 
primitive  Indo-European,  but  also  characterized  the 
members  of  the  Teutonic  branch  as  compared  with 
their  immediate  parent.  Some  of  the  earliest  tongues 
retained  more  than  others  ;  the  Gothic,  as  the  old- 
est, naturally  retained  the  most  of  any.  Each  one 
of  them,  however,  clung  to  particular  forms  and  in- 
flections which  the  others  had  given  up  partly  or 
wholly.  Before  considering  the  special  later  history  of 
English,  it  is  therefore  desirable  to  point  out  some 
general  resemblances  which  existed  between  it  in  its 
earliest  state,  and  the  sister-languages  of  the  same 
Teutonic  branch.  When  once  the  common  basis  from 
which  they  started  is  understood,  the  later  relations  of 
each  to  the  others  immediately  become  much  clearer. 
Especially  does  the  later  history  of  our  tongue  have 
light  thrown  upon  it  by  the  development  which  has 
characterized  the  rest.     We  shall,  in  this  place,  limit 


Case  in  the  Primitive   Teutonic.  197 

ourselves  to  the  general  features  that  mark  the  inflec- 
tion of  the  noun,  the  adjective,  and  the  pronoun,  in 
order  to  make  plain  the  loss  sustained  by  the  primitive 
Teutonic  as  compared  with  the  primitive  Indo-Euro- 
pean, and  further  the  loss  of  the  English  as  compared 
with  the  parent  Teutonic.  The  characteristics  of  the 
verb,  so  far  as  they  are  examined  at  all,  will  be  dis- 
cussed by  themselves. 

6.  Case.  —  The  primitive  Indo-European  had  eight 
cases.  These  were  the  nominative,  the  subject  of  the 
sentence  ;  the  accusative,  the  case  of  the  direct  object ; 
the  dative,  the  case  of  the  indirect  object ;  the  genitive, 
the  case  of  general  relation,  or  the  of  case  ;  the  instru- 
mental, the  case  denoting  accompaniment  and  means, 
the  with  or  by  case  ;  the  ablative,  the  case  denoting 
separation,  the  from  case  ;  the  locative,  the  case  de- 
noting the  place  where  any  thing  is  or  is  done,  the  at 
or  in  case ;  and  the  vocative,  or  the  case  of  address. 
All  of  these  were  originally  distinguished  by  difference 
of  ending.  But  the  tendency  showed  itself,  from  the 
earliest  period  of  which  we  have  any  record,  to  give 
up  one  or  more  of  these  case-forms.  When  this  result 
occurred,  one  of  two  things  happened.  Either  the 
place  of  the  case  that  was  abandoned  was  taken  by 
another  case  with  a  preposition,  or  one  case  was  made 
to  do  the  duty  of  another  in  addition  to  its  own.  Thus, 
in  Latin,  the  ablative  was  required  to  perform  the  instru- 
mental relation,  and,  in  Greek,  the  genitive  the  ablative 
relation. 

7.  Of  these  eight  cases  the  primitive  Teutonic  still 


198  English  Language. 


retained  six,  though  only  four  of  them  could  be  said 
to  exist  in  full  vigor.  The  two  that  were  lost  from 
this  branch  were  the  ablative  and  the  locative.  Two 
others,  the  vocative  and  the  instrumental,  maintained 
a  lingering  life.  A  special  form  for  the  vocative  is 
found  in  the  noun  of  the  Gothic.  The  instrumental 
is  occasionally  but  clearly  seen  in  the  singular  of  the 
noun  and  adjective  in  the  Old  High  German  and  the 
Old  Saxon,  and  in  the  demonstrative  pronouns  of  all 
the  early  Teutonic  tongues,  save  the  Old  Norse.  It  is 
likewise  regarded  by  many  as  belonging  to  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  noun  and  adjective.  But  the  remaining  four 
cases  are  found  in  all  the  older  languages  of  this 
branch,  including,  of  course,  Anglo-Saxon,  and  still 
survive  in  one  of  them,  the  New  High  German. 

8.  Number. — The  primitive  Indo-European  had 
three  numbers,  —  the  singular,  the  dual,  and  the  plural. 
In  the  Teutonic  noun  and  adjective  the  dual  had  dis- 
appeared entirely.  The  Gothic  retained  it  to  some 
extent  in  the  verb.  In  the  personal  pronouns  of  the 
first  and  second  person,  however,  it  is  found  in  all  the 
earlier  languages  of  this  branch,  save  that,  in  some  of 
them,  forms  for  certain  cases  are  very  rare,  if  not  lack- 
ing entirely. 

9.  Declension. — There  are  two  declensions  of  the 
Teutonic  noun.  They  are  termed  respectively  the 
vowel  or  strong,  and  the  consonant  or  weak  declension  ; 
but  in  the  older  languages  they  underwent  still  further 
division.  The  vowel-declension  was  split  up  into  three, 
according  as  one  of  the  short  vowels,  0  —  to  which  a 


Declension  in  the  Primitive  Teutonic.    199 

was  the  corresponding  feminine  —  or  i  or  u,  was  the 
final  of  the  formative  syllable,  or  itself  the  formative 
syllable,  added  to  the  radical  syllable  to  make  the  stem. 
The  endings  of  the  noun  had  been  frequently  so  cut 
down,  even  in  the  earliest  Teutonic  tongues,  that  in  the 
majority  of  cases  there  can  be  found  in  the  nominative 
only  a  remnant  of  the  additions  originally  made  to  the 
radical  syllable.  In  Anglo-Saxon  the  abbreviation  was 
carried  still  further,  so  that  often  nothing  but  the  radi- 
cal syllable  itself  was  left.  Thus  the  word  for  '  fish  '  is 
in  Gothic  fisks,  in  Old  Norse  fiskr,  while  in  our  early 
speech  it  is  simply  fisc.  It  is  to  be  added  that  original 
o  generally  became  a  in  the  Teutonic  tongues,  and 
hence  the  ^-declension  was  for  a  long  period  com- 
monly called  the  ^-declension. 

10.  In  each  one  of  these  subordinate  declensions 
in  0,  in  /,  and  in  u,  the  nouns  had  different  inflections, 
according  as  they  were  of  the  masculine,  the  feminine, 
or  the  neuter  gender.  Consequently,  in  the  primitive 
Teutonic,  there  were  probably  nine  different  inflections 
belonging  to  the  vowel-declension.  Still  this  system 
can  nowhere  be  found,  if  it  ever  really  existed,  in  its 
theoretical  perfection.  There  is,  for  example,  not  a 
single  neuter  noun  belonging  to  the  /-declension  in 
any  one  of  the  earliest  Teutonic  tongues  ;  and  there 
are  numerous  other  indications  that  this  system  was 
losing  everywhere  its  complex  character.  In  particu- 
lar in  the  Anglo-Saxon  the  declension  in  o  had  practi- 
cally absorbed  the  declension  in  //,  the  special  termi- 
nations of  the  latter  having  been  abandoned,  and  those 


200  English  Language. 

of  the  former  having  been  substituted.  There  was, 
besides,  but  very  little  left  of  the  /-declension,  its  words 
having  largely  gone  over  to  the  f-declension. 

ii.  Again,  of  the  primitive  Indo-European  conso- 
nant declensions,  only  the  one  in  which  the  stem  ended 
in  -an  was  retained  in  the  Teutonic.  Accordingly  the 
weak  or  consonant  declension  is  sometimes  called 
'the  ^-declension.  This  became  a  favorite  declension 
in  the  Teutonic  tongues,  and  existed  in  full  vigor  in 
all  the  early  ones.  In  them  it  had  inflections  some- 
what distinct,  according  as  the  noun  was  masculine, 
feminine,  or  neuter,  though  these  differences  were  far 
from  being  as  marked  as  in  the  vowel  declensions. 

12.  But  though  the  ^-declension  was  the  one 
consonant  declension  that  really  flourished  in  the 
early  Teutonic  languages,  there  still  continued  to  sur- 
vive in  them  relics  of  other  consonant  declensions 
once  of  wide  employment  in  the  primitive  tongue. 
Nor  have  they  died  out  entirely  in  our  present  speech. 
To  them  belong  nouns  like  man  and  tooth,  which  still 
exhibit  vowel- modification  in  the  plural ;  others  like 
month,  and  night,  and  cow,  which,  though  they  have 
come  to  be  declined  regularly,  show  traces  of  their 
ancient  inflection  in  terms  like  '  twelvemonth,'  '  fort- 
night,' and  the  dialectic  '  kye ' ;  and  certain,  having 
stems  in  -r  or  in  -nd,  such  as  nouns  denoting  the  family 
relation  like  father  and  brother,  or  present  participles 
used  as  nouns,  such  as  were  originally  friend  and  fiend. 
These  and  others  which  could  be  mentioned  are, 
however,  so  few  in  number  comparatively  that  they 
are  properly  treated  as  anomalous. 


Declension  in  the  Primitive   Teutonic.    201 

13.  There  is  also  a  third  declension,  unlike  either 
of  the  two  just  mentioned,  which  is  found  in  pronouns 
and  adjectives.  Its  peculiar  characteristics  will  be 
seen  further  on.  Besides  these  general  features,  com- 
mon to  the  inflection  of  the  Teutonic  noun,  adjective, 
and  pronoun,  there  were  certain  peculiarities  con- 
nected with  the  changes  in  vowels  or  consonants  that 
need  to  be  described  here,  for  they  have  been  per- 
petuated through  all  periods  of  English.  They  are 
not  confined,  however,  to  any  particular  parts  of 
speech. 

14.  One  of  these  is  the  tendency  in  inflection  of 
certain  letters  to  pass  into  others.  There  were  several 
instances  of  this  nature  in  the  early  Teutonic  tongues. 
For  example,  in  the  inflection  of  the  Anglo-Saxon 
verb  d  not  unfrequently  passed  into  d,  a  result  of 
which,  though  disguised,  can  still  be  observed  in  the 
preterite  coi/{l)<l  and  the  adjective  un-couth}  But  a 
more  striking  exemplification  of  this  practice  is  the 
passing  of  s  into  r,  which  goes  sometimes  under  the 
name  of  rhotacism.  This  particular  transition  was  by 
no  means  uncommon  in  many  of  the  Indo-European 
languages,  and  is  familiarly  exemplified  in  the  Latin 
comparative  of  the  adjective  ;  as,  for  instance,  fort-ior, 
fort-ins.  Among  the  Teutonic  tongues  it  was  most 
widely  employed  in  the  Old  Norse  ;  but  in  Anglo- 
Saxon  it  was  occasionally  found.  A  trace  of  it  can 
still  be  seen  in  the  adjectives  lorn  and  forlorn,  origi- 
nally the  past  participles  of  -leosan,  '  to  lose,'  and  for- 

1  See  Part  II.,  sec.  414. 


202  English  Language. 

leosan,  'to  lose  entirely'  (182).  But  there  is  one 
marked  example  of  it  in  Modern  English  in  the  imper- 
fect of  the  substantive  verb,  which  has  for  its  singular 
was,  but  for  its  plural  were  instead  of  wese. 

15.  Far  more  conspicuous  and  important  has  been 
and  is  the  part  played  by  vowel-variation.  This,  as 
used  in  this  work,  will  be  employed  to  denote  any 
change  of  vowel-sound,  no  matter  from  what  cause 
arising,  that  takes  place  within  the  radical  syllable.  It 
will,  therefore,  denote  alike  the  changes  seen  in  inflec- 
tion in  such  words  as  man,  men,  in  sell,  sold,  in  drive, 
drove,  and  in  the  formation  of  new  words  from  the 
same  root,  sometimes  closely  related  in  meaning,  some- 
times widely  differing,  as  may  be  exemplified  by  band 
and  bond,  and  numerous  others.  Two  kinds  of  vowel- 
variation  will  be  defined  more  specifically. 

16.  The  first  is  vowel-change  (German,  ablaut). 
This  is  especially  seen  in  the  change  of  the  vowel  of 
the  radical  syllable,  by  which  the  inflection  of  verbs 
of  the  strong  conjugation  was  and  still  is  denoted, 
familiar  examples  are  begin,  began;  thrive,  throve; 
tear,  tore.  Under  this  head  will  also  be  included  that 
class  of  strong  verbs  which  formed  the  preterite  by 
reduplication  —  that  is,  by  the  repetition  of  the  stem 
syllable  with  more  or  less  of  abbreviation  and  modifi- 
cation. Examples  of  this  practice  can  be  observed  in 
the  Latin  mordeo,  mo-mordi ;  tundo,  tu-tundi ;  eauo, 
ee-cini.  This  method  of  forming  the  preterite  has 
been  plainly  preserved  in  the  Gothic  alone  of  the 
Teutonic    tongues.      In    the    other    languages    of  this 


Vozvcl-Change.  203 

branch  of  the  Indo-European  family  but  faint  traces 
of  it  can  now  be  discovered. 

17.  The  Gothic  has  some  forty  verbs  in  which  this 
reduplication  appears.  Even  in  that  tongue,  it  had  so 
far  departed  from  the  theoretical  primitive  type,  that 
only  the  initial  letter  of  the  root  was  repeated  with  a 
constant  vowel-sound  denoted  by  ai  (thus,  present, 
blamla,  '  blend,'  preterite,  baibland,  '  blended  ' ;  pres- 
ent, halda,  '  hold,'  preterite,  haihald,  '  held  ' ;  present, 
sicpa,  'sleep,'  preterite,  saizlep,  'slept').  But,  in  the 
other  Teutonic  dialects,  the  abbreviation  had  been 
carried  still  further.  Not  only  was  the  final  letter  or 
letters  of  the  reduplicational  syllable  dropped,  but  the 
initial  letter  of  the  radical  syllable  and,  in  some  cases, 
the  vowel  also  of  the  radical  syllable.  The  redupli- 
cational and  radical  syllables  were  thus  united  into 
one ;  and,  in  Anglo-Saxon  verbs  of  this  kind,  the 
result  of  this  contraction  was  a  monosyllabic  preterite 
with  the  vowel  e,  e,  or  the  diphthong  eo,  eo  running 
through  both  the  singular  and  the  plural.  Taking  the 
three  verbs  above  given,  blandan,  healdan,  and  slZepau, 
we  have,  accordingly,  in  Anglo-Saxon,  the  presents, 
blende,  healde,  and  sfizpe,  the  preterites,  blend,  heold, 
and  step.  In  a  few  cases  only  is  this  primitive  redu- 
plication clearly  discernible  in  our  early  tongue.  Thus 
Gothic  haitan,  '  to  call,'  has  as  preterite  haihait;  the 
corresponding  Anglo-Saxon  hatan  has  for  its  preterite 
heht. 

18.  The  second  kind  of  vowel-variation  is  in  this 
work   termed   vowel-modification    (German,    umlaut). 


204  English  Language. 

It  is  in  Modern  English  exemplified  in  die  inflection 
of  a  number  of  nouns,  such  as  man,  men;  foot,  feet ; 
mouse,  mice.  It  is  not  only  widely  different  in  its 
character  from  vowel-change,  it  is  likewise  widely  dif- 
ferent in  its  origin.  It  was  not  known  to  the  Gothic  ; 
it  is  comparatively  infrequent  in  Old  High  German  ; 
but  in  the  other  Teutonic  tongues  it  is  prevalent, 
especially  in  the  Norse.  In  Anglo-Saxon  it  was  prin- 
cipally caused  by  the  influence  of  the  vowel  i  of  a  fol- 
lowing syllable. 

19.  Vowel-modification  is  the  variation  of  sound 
produced  in  a  radical  syllable  by  the  influence  of  a 
vowel  in  the  syllable  added,  usually  an  added  inflec- 
tional syllable.  It  is  a  noticeable  fact,  that,  under 
certain  circumstances,  the  vowel  of  an  added  syllable 
has  often  a  tendency  to  modify  the  vowel  of  a  stressed 
syllable  to  which  the  addition  is  made.  Before  pro- 
nouncing the  vowel  of  the  first  syllable,  the  thought  of 
the  vowel  of  the  following  one  comes  into  the  mind. 
Unconsciously  there  is  an  effort  to  bring  about  a  simi- 
larity of  sound  ;  and  the  result  is,  that  a  sound  is 
given  to  the  vowel  of  the  first  syllable  intermediate 
between  the  sound  it  had  previously  and  the  sound  of 
the  vowel  in  the  syllable  added.  This  is  seen,  for 
illustration,  in  the  word  anig,  '  any,'  derived  from  an, 
'one,'  and  the  suffix  -tg,  Modern  English  -y.  The 
influence  of  the  vowel  of  the  added  syllable  has  been 
sufficient  to  change  the  vowel  of  the  primitive  from 
a  to  ce. 

20.  This  modification  of  the  vowel  of  the  preced- 


Vowel-Modification.  205 

ing  syllable  was  produced  by  several  vowels ;  but,  as 
has  just  been  said,  it  was  the  influence  of  a  following 
i  that  was  most  conspicuous  in  Anglo-Saxon.  In  this 
matter  it  made  no  difference  whether  the  original  i 
itself  still  continued  to  be  found,  or  had  disappeared 
entirely,  or  had  been  changed  into  another  vowel. 
The  result  remained.  Only  a  few  of  the  variations 
wrought  by  this  vowel  will  be  indicated  here.  The 
influence  of  the  i  of  a  following  syllable  changed  a  of 
a  preceding  accented  syllable  to  e ;  changed  o  usually 
and  //  regularly  to  y ;  changed  0  to  e  and  u  to  y ;  and 
changed  the  diphthongs  ea  and  eo  to  ie,  later  i  or  y. 
Thus  the  0  of  gold  became  gylden,  '  gilden,  golden,' 
in  the  derived  adjective,  and  the  o  of  dom,  '  doom,' 
became  deman,  '  to  deem,'  in  the  derived  verb. 
Again,  the  Anglo-Saxon  /of, '  foot,'  has  in  the  nomina- 
tive and  accusative  plural/?/,  '  feet,'  and  also  the  same 
form  in  the  dative  singular.  The  change  of  o  to  e  in 
these  cases  of  the  noun  is  due  to  the  influence  of  an 
i,  which  once  belonged  to  them  as  an  additional  sylla- 
ble, but  which  had  come  to  be  dropped.  But  though 
the  cause  disappeared,  the  effect  continued.  Men 
retained  in  their  speech  the  modification  wrought  by 
the  vowel  after  the  fact  had  been  long  forgotten  that 
the  vowel  itself  had  ever  been  added  ;  and  this  is 
equally  true  of  the  other  instances  adduced. 

21.  This  concludes  all  that  is  necessary  to  be  said 
here  of  the  features  common  to  English  with  the  other 
Teutonic  tongues.  Before  entering,  however,  upon 
the  later  specific  history  of  the  inflection  of  our  Ian- 


2o6  English  Language. 

guage,  it  is  important  to  have  clearly  in  mind  the 
terminology  here  employed,  and,  though  already  given 
in  full,  it  will  bear  repetition.1  The  history  of  the 
language  is  in  this  work  divided  into  four  periods  : 
the  first,  called  the  Anglo-Saxon,  extending  from  the 
coming  of  the  Teutonic  tribes  to  the  year  1150;  the 
second,  the  Old  English,  extending  from  1150  to 
1350;  the  third,  the  Middle  English,  from  1350  to 
1550;  and  the  fourth,  the  Modern  English,  from  1550 
to  the  present  time.  Furthermore,  whenever  it  is 
desired  to  cover  the  whole  period  between  1150  and 
1550,  the  term  Early  English  is  employed.  It  is  also 
to  be  remembered,  that,  during  the  Old  and  Middle 
English  periods,  the  language  both  of  literature  and 
of  daily  life  was  divided  into  three  great  dialects, 
called,  from  their  geographical  position,  the  Northern, 
the  Midland,  and  the  Southern  ;  and  that  literary 
English  is  a  descendant  of  the  Midland,  and  that 
the  Scotch  dialect  belongs  to  the  Northern.2 

22.  There  is  still  another  point  which  needs  special 
consideration  before  entering  upon  the  internal  history 
of  our  tongue.  This  is  the  important  fact,  that,  from 
the  beginning  of  the  twelfth  century  to  the  middle  of 
the  fourteenth  century,  —  and  the  limits  might  be 
extended,  —  there  was  no  such  thing  as  standard 
English.  Everything,  in  consequence,  was  fluctuat- 
ing and  uncertain.  No  authority  existed  anywhere,  as 
to  the  use  of  words  and  grammatical  forms,  to  which 
all  felt   themselves  obliged  to    submit.     Every  writer 

1  See  page  87.  2  See  page  121  ff. 


Periods  of  Comparison.  207 

was,  to  a  large  extent,  a  law  unto  himself,  and  followed 
the  special  dialect  of  his  own  district  in  the  lack  of 
a  generally  recognized  standard  which  could  not  be 
safely  violated.  But  a  tongue  split  up  into  dialects, 
and  possessing  nowhere  binding  rules  for  syntactical 
agreement  and  arrangement,  nor  authoritative  methods 
of  inflection,  can  hardly  be  said  to  have  a  history  of 
any  general  orderly  development  of  its  own.  The 
account  which  is  given  of  it  can  never  be  much  more 
than  a  classification  of  the  differences  of  speech  pre- 
vailing in  different  sections  of  the  country,  or  a  record 
of  the  peculiarities  of  grammar  and  vocabulary  that 
characterize  individual  writers. 

23.  This  is  a  condition  of  things  which  conspicuously 
characterized  our  speech  during  the  Old  English  period. 
In  it,  at  that  time,  can  be  found  the  processes  going 
on  in  full  activity  that  destroyed  the  language  of  litera- 
ture as  seen  in  the  tenth  and  eleventh  centuries,  and, 
likewise,  the  regenerating  processes  going  on  that  were 
to  develop  the  language  of  literature  of  the  fourteenth 
and  the  following  centuries.  It  is  only  between  these 
clearly  defined  points  that  comparison  can  properly 
be  made  ;  and,  even  at  the  beginning  of  the  latter 
period,  the  language  of  literature  is  rather  in  process 
of  formation  than  actually  formed.  Still,  after  the 
break  up  of  the  classical  Anglo-Saxon,  the  fourteenth 
century  is  the  first  period  in  which  anything  can  be 
called  fixed,  and  in  which,  in  consequence,  any  com- 
parison can  be  made  between  the  past  and  what  is 
existing.     In  the  conflicting  usage  of  this  time  also, 


2o8  Englisli  Language. 

the  Midland  dialect  is  necessarily  selected,  to  the  ex- 
clusion of  the  other  two,  because  from  it  Modern 
English  strictly  descended  ;  and  of  the  authors  who 
wrote  in  the  Midland,  with  more  or  less  diversity  of 
usage  among  themselves,  the  language  of  Chaucer  is 
likewise  necessarily  selected  as  representative,  not  only 
because  he  was  much  the  greatest  of  all,  but  more 
especially  because  his  works  had  a  greater  influence  on 
the  future  development  of  the  speech  than  the  works 
of  all  the  others  put  together.  The  two  points,  there- 
fore, selected  in  representing  the  forms  prevalent  in 
the  early  history  of  the  language  will  be  ordinarily  the 
tenth  and  eleventh  centuries,  —  the  period  of  the 
later  classic  West-Saxon  dialect  of  Anglo-Saxon, — 
and  the  latter  half  of  the  fourteenth  century,  which 
witnessed  the  birth  of  Modern  English  literature  in  the 
strict  sense  of  that  phrase. 


CHAPTER   II. 

THE  NOUN. 

24.  The  following  general  statements  may  be  made 
of  the  English  noun  during  the  Anglo-Saxon  period. 
It  had,— 

1.  Two  declensions:  the  vowel  or  strong,  and  the 
consonant  or  weak.  The  former  was  limited  mainly 
to  stems  which  ended  originally  in  0  (9),  although 
there  were  remains  of  those  in  i  and  //,  especially 
of  the  one  in  i.  The  latter  was  mainly  limited  to  the 
stems  ending  in  -n  (11),  fragments  remaining  only  of 
those  in  -r,  in  -nd,  in  -os  and  -es,  and  some  other 
letters  (12). 

2.  Two  numbers  :  the  singular  and  the  plural. 

3.  Four  cases :  the  nominative,  the  genitive,  the 
dative,  and  the  accusative.  Many  grammarians,  fol- 
lowing Grimm,1  add  a  fifth,  the  instrumental.  This 
was  at  one  time  distinguished  from  the  dative  in  the 
singular  by  marking  for  the  former  the  final  -e,  common 
to  both,  as  long  -e ;  but  the  practice  is  no  longer  con- 
tinued.    There  is  no  difference  at  all  in  the  plural. 

1  "  Geschichte  der  Deutschen  Sprache,"  936. 
209 


2IO 


English  Lantrttasrc. 


4.  Three  genders :  the  masculine,  the  feminine, 
and  the  neuter.  As  will  be  seen  by  the  examples,  it 
is  grammatical,  not  natural  gender. 

25.  The  following  paradigms  of  the  masculine 
nouns,  stan,  'stone,'  and  ende,  'end';  of  the  feminities 
earn,  '  care,'  and  wund,  '  wound ' ;  and  of  the  neuters 
hors,  'horse,'  and  scip,  'ship,'  will  exhibit  the  vari- 
ous inflections  of  the  noun  of  the  vowel-declension 
as  commonly  seen  in  the  Anglo-Saxon.  The  vowel 
of  the  stem  has  in  certain  of  the  cases  been  often 
dropped  altogether,  or  has  been  weakened,  or  changed 
into  other  vowels. 

I.    Vowel  Declension. 


SINGULAR. 

Mascul 

ine. 

Feminine. 

Nom. 

stan, 

ende, 

caru, 

wund, 

Gen. 

stam-s, 

endes, 

care, 

vvunde, 

Dat. 

stane, 

ende, 

care, 

wunde, 

Ace. 

stan. 

ende. 

PLURAL. 

care. 

wunde. 

Mascul 

inc. 

cara, 

Nom. 

stanas, 

endas, 

wunda, 

Gen. 

stana, 

enda,             - 

r  cara, 
t  carena 

wunda, 
9 

Dat. 

stanum, 

endum, 

carum, 

wundum, 

Aec. 

stanas. 

endas. 

cara. 

wunda. 

Vowel  Declension  of  the  Nonn.  2 1 1 


SINGULAR. 

Neuter. 


hors,  scip, 

horses,  scipes, 

horse,  scipe, 

hors.  scip. 

PLURAL. 

Neuter. 

t ' \ 

hors,  scipu, 

horsa,         scipa, 

horsum,     scipum, 

hors.  scipu. 

26.  Nouns  originally  belonging  to  the  other  two 
vowel  declensions,  that  is,  those  whose  stems  ended 
in  i  or  ?/,  had,  even  in  the  Anglo-Saxon,  gone  over 
wholly  or  partially  to  the  ^-declension.  There  were 
no  small  number  of  feminines,  however,  which  be- 
longed still  to  the  /-declension ;  but  their  forms  had 
become  largely  confused  with  those  of  the  prevailing 
declension  in  o.  As  none  of  them  had  any  influence 
upon  the  later  development  of  the  inflection,  their 
consideration  is  omitted  here  altogether. 

27.  The  consonant,  or,  more  specifically,  the  con- 
sonant declension  in  -//,  will  be  exemplified  by  para- 
digms of  the  masculine  noun  oxa,  'ox,'  of  the 
feminine,  fmige,  '  tongue,'  and  of  the  neuter,  eage, 
'eye.'      The   stems    are    oxan,    tungan,    and    lagan. 


212 


English  L a nguagc. 


But  not  only  have  the  original  case-endings  usually 
disappeared  ;  in  some  instances,  the  -n  also  has  been 
dropped,  or  the  a  weakened  into  e. 

II.    Consonant  Declension. 


SINGULAR. 

Masculine. 

Feminine. 

Neuter. 

Norn. 

oxa, 

tunge, 

eage, 

Gen. 

oxan, 

tungan, 

eagan, 

Dat. 

oxan, 

tungan, 

eagan, 

Ace. 

oxan. 

tungan. 
PLURAL. 

eage. 

Masculine. 

Feminine. 

Neuter. 

Norn. 

oxan, 

tungan, 

eagan, 

Gen. 

oxena, 

tungena, 

eagena, 

Dat. 

oxum, 

tungum, 

eagum, 

Ace. 

oxan. 

tungan. 

eagan. 

28.  According  to  some  one  of  the  paradigms  found 
in  sects.  25  and  27,  the  immense  majority  of  all  nouns 
were  declined  during  the  Anglo-Saxon  period.  There 
are  a  few  exceptions,  which  will  be  referred  to  later. 
As  between  the  vowel  and  the  consonant  declension, 
there  was  not  much  difference  in  the  number  of 
substantives  belonging  to  each  in  the  Anglo-Saxon; 
and  the  foreign  words  that  came  in  were  inflected 
according  to  either.     When   ending  in    a   consonant, 


Confusion  of  tlic  Noun  Inflection.        213 

they  were  usually  inflected  according  to  the  vowel 
declension,  and,  when  in  a  vowel,  according  to  the 
consonant.  This  state  of  things  did  not  perpetuate 
itself.  It  is  evident,  on  even  a  superficial  examina- 
tion, that,  of  the  six  different  inflections  given  above, 
Modern  English  has  retained  only  that  found  in  the 
masculine  noun  of  the  vowel  declension,  —  the  one 
represented  by  stan  and  ende. 

29.  Still,  for  a  century  after  the  Norman  Conquest, 
these  different  inflections  were  kept  up  with  a  fair 
degree  of  correctness.  The  changes  that  took  place, 
such  as  they  were,  involved,  however,  as  an  inevitable 
consequence,  the  confusion  of  the  declensions.  One 
of  these  changes  was  the  general  weakening  into  e  of  i 
the  vowels  a,  o,  and  tt  of  the  endings.  This  manifested 
itself,  indeed,  long  before  the  Conquest ;  but  the  influ- 
ence of  the  literary  speech  was  sufficient  to  keep  it 
under  restraint.  As  soon  as  that  was  removed,  this 
general  weakening  of  the  vowels  made  rapid  headway. 
In  consequence  of  it,  stanas  and  endas,  for  illustration, 
became  stanes  and  aides ;  earn  became  care ;  scipit 
became  scipe ;  and  oxan  and  tungan  became  oxen  and 
tungen.  So  far,  then,  as  difference  of  inflection  was 
denoted  by  difference  of  vowel  in  the  endings,  all 
distinction  between  number,  case,  and  declension  had 
disappeared  before  the  end  of  the  twelfth  century  by 
the  general  use  of  e  for  the  vowels  previously  employed. 

30.  This  was  not  enough  of  itself,  however,  to  over- 
throw the  inflectional  system  of  the  noun.  At  this 
point   another  change  came    in  to  break   down  the 


214  English  Language. 

broad  distinction  previously  prevailing  between  the 
vowel  and  the  consonant  declension.  After  the  mid,- 
dle  of  the  twelfth  century,  there  was  a  constant  ten- 
dency toward  the  assimilation  of  these  two,  from  the 
arbitrary  gains  and  losses  that  went  on  in  the  use  of  a 
single  letter.  This  was  ;/,  which  was  of  special  im- 
portance from  its  terminating  a  large  number  of  cases 
in  the  consonant  declension.  From  these,  however,  it 
came  in  the  twelfth  century  to  be  frequently  dropped. 
This  dropping  of  the  final  -//  had,  indeed,  manifested 
itself,  as  early  as  the  ninth  century,  in  the  West-Saxon 
dialect,  though  then  more  especially  in  the  infinitive 
and  subjunctive  of  the  verb,  and  in  the  definite  adjec- 
tive ;  but  here,  again,  as  in  the  case  of  the  weakening 
of  the  vowels  a,  o,  and  //  to  e,  the  literary  language  had 
arrested  the  movement.  Within  a  century  after  the 
Conquest,  however,  the  process  had  again  begun. 
Thus  the  genitive,  dative,  and  accusative  singular  of 
e-xan,  tungan,  and  eagan  of  the  consonant  declension, 
after  passing  through  the  intermediate  stages,  oxen, 
tungen,  and  e^en,  became  frequently,  with  the  -n 
dropped,  oxe,  tunge,  and  eje.  This  brought  them  at 
the  very  outset  into  complete  similarity  with  many 
nouns  of  the  vowel  declension,  which,  as  we  shall 
subsequently  see,  had  also  come  to  end  in  -e. 

31.  The  reduction  of  the  various  terminations  of 
many  nouns  of  the  two  declensions  to  the  one  ending 
-e  had  frequently,  in  consequence,  the  effect  of  render- 
ing it  difficult  to  decide,  in  any  given  case,  to  which 
of  these  two  declensions  any  particular  noun  strictly 


Confusion  of  the  Noun  Inflection.        2 1 5 

belonged.  The  result  of  this  confusion  can  be  clearly 
traced  in  the  language  for  more  than  two  hundred  years 
after  the  Conquest.  It  was  not  uncommon,  in  the 
uncertainty  that  sprang  up,  for  an  -n  to  be  added  to 
the  dative  and  accusative  singular  of  nouns  belonging 
to  the  vowel  declension.  Thus  Anglo-Saxon  cyng, 
'king,'  is  a  masculine  noun  inflected  in  the  same  man- 
ner as  stan.  Accordingly,  its  dative  and  accusative  sin- 
gular should  strictly  have  been  in  late  twelfth-century 
English,  kinge  and  king  respectively.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  they  both  sometimes  appeared  as  kingen.  This 
uncertainty  added  another  element  of  confusion  to 
that  which  already  prevailed.  So  thoroughly  con- 
founded, indeed,  did  these  two  declensions  become, 
especially  in  the  plural  number,  that  it  is  by  no  means 
infrequent  to  find  the  same  word,  in  the  pages  of  the 
same  author,  sometimes  with  the  plural  -es  of  the  mas- 
culine nouns  of  the  vowel  declension,  or  with  the  plural 
-en  of  the  consonant.  In  the  South  of  England  in 
particular,  it  almost  seems  as  if  the  two  terminations 
could  be  used  indiscriminately  in  the  case  of  certain 
words.  This  peculiarity  lasted  down  to  the  Middle 
English  period. 

32.  Nor,  indeed,  was  this  all.  A  third  plural  form, 
though  far  less  commonly  employed,  came  into  use. 
Its  ending  was  -c.  It  was  derived  from  the  weakened 
-a  or  -u  of  the  feminine  and  neuter  nouns  of  the  vowel 
declension,  or  from  the  dropping  of  -n  of  the  con- 
sonant declension.  The  same  author,  therefore, 
formed,  at  times,  his  plural  with  three  different  ter- 


216  English  Language. 

ruinations ;  or,  rather,  it  is  more  proper  to  say  that 
these  three  terminations  appeared  in  different  copies 
of  the  same  work.  Thus  the  two  texts  of  the  "  Brut " 
of  Layamon  furnish,  as  plurals  for  the  Anglo-Saxon 
masculine  noun  sfan,  the  forms  staves,  stanen,  and 
stane  ;  for  plurals  of  the  neuter  noun  hors,  the  forms 
horses,  horsen,  and  horse. 

33.  Such  a  system  as  this,  which  was  little  more 
than  the  product  of  ignorance  and  confusion,  had  in 
itself  no  element  of  perpetuity.  The  process  of  sim- 
plifying inflection  merely  as  a  measure  of  relief  went 
on  rapidly,  in  consequence,  though  much  more  so  in 
the  North  than  in  the  South.  This  simplification  was 
eventually  attained  by  discarding  the  terminations 
almost  entirely.  When,  in  the  latter  half  of  the  four- 
teenth century,  a  new  language  of  literature  appeared, 
the  inflection  of  the  noun  had  been  reduced  to  nearly 
its  present  state.  Whatever  of  it  had  been  preserved 
conformed  in  general  to  that  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  mas- 
culine noun  of  the  vowel  declension,  represented  in 
the  paradigm  of  sfan.  This  is  the  inflection  which 
became  finally  established  in  English  speech.  Its  his- 
tory, therefore,  requires  a  more  detailed  examination 
of  the  endings  of  the  cases  belonging  to  it  and  of  the 
gradual  adoption  of  these  endings  by  nouns  originally 
inflected  differently. 

34.  First,  as  regards  the  simplification  of  the  singu- 
lar. The  fact,  that,  in  this  number,  masculines  and 
neuters  of  the  vowel  declension  had  precisely  the 
same  inflection, — as  can  be  seen  by  comparing  sta?i 


Assimilation  of  the  Cases.  217 

and  /tors,  —  had,  doubtless,  much  to  do  with  the 
universal  adoption  of  the  endings  belonging  to  them  ; 
for  these  two  declensions  united  embraced  a  very 
large  proportion  of  the  nouns  of  the  language.  In 
these  the  nominative,  dative,  and  accusative  had 
largely  come,  in  the  time  of  Chaucer,  to  have  the 
same  form.  In  the  case  of  words  ending  in  a  con- 
sonant, the  process  generally  took  place  after  this 
manner.  The  dative  and  accusative  singular  speedily  ^ 
began  to  lose,  and  by  the  fourteenth  century  had 
practically  lost,  all  distinction  of  form.  This  was 
brought  about  in  one  of  two  ways.  Either  the  dative 
sometimes  dropped  a  final  -e  to  which  it  was  entitled ; 
or,  secondly,  and  far  more  commonly,  the  accusative  " 
assumed  a  final  -e  to  which  it  was  not  entitled.  Thus 
the  dative  and  accusative  came  to  have  the  same 
form,  sometimes  ending,  sometimes  not  ending,  in  a 
final  -e.  The  same  word,  indeed,  was  not  only  treated 
in  this  respect  differently  by  different  authors,  but  dif- 
ferently at  different  places  in  the  same  manuscript. 
Thus,  for  illustration,  the  dative  and  accusative  of  the 
Anglo-Saxon  stun  and  hors  would,  in  Early  English, 
be  represented  in  both  cases,  sometimes  by  ston  and 
hors,  and  sometimes  by  stone  and  horse. 

35.  But  the  assimilation  did  not  stop  at  this  point. 
In  Anglo-Saxon  the  form  for  the  nominative  and  ac- 
cusative was  alike  in  masculine  and  neuter  nouns  of 
the  vowel  declension.  It  was  natural  that  it  should 
continue  to  be  regarded  and  treated  as  the  same  by 
the  users  of  speech.     When,  therefore,  the  accusative 


2i8  English  Language. 

assumed  an  -e  which  did  not  belong  to  it,  the  inevita- 
ble result  was,  that  this  -e  should  be  added  likewise  to 
the  nominative.  Hence  in  a  large  number  of  instances 
nouns  originally  ending  in  a  consonant  early  assumed 
and  have  since  retained  a  final  -e,  to  which  etymologi- 
cally  they  are  not  entitled. 

36.  This  was  a  condition  of  things  that  would  have 
been  pretty  certain  to  happen  if  no  other  influences 
than  those  already  mentioned  had  been  brought  to 
bear ;  but,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  a  very  powerful  one 
from  another  quarter  aided  to  hasten  the  accomplish- 
ment of  this  result.  This  was  the  fact  that  the  nouns 
belonging  to  all  the  other  declensions,  which  had 
begun  to  conform  to  the  inflection  of  the  masculine 
noun,  had,  by  the  weakening  of  the  final  vowel  and 
the  dropping  of  the  final  -;/,  brought  about  indepen- 
dently the  assimilation  of  the  nominative,  dative,  and 
accusative.  An  examination  of  the  changes  through 
which  earn  and  oxa  went  will  make  this  perfectly 
clear.  Cam  had  in  Anglo-Saxon  its  dative  and  ac- 
cusative care:  the  weakening  of  the  final  -u  to  -e  made 
its  nominative  of  precisely  the  same  form,  care.  So 
oxa,  which  in  Early  English  became  oxe,  had  origi- 
nally  for  dative  and  accusative  oxan,  which  first 
became  oxen,  and  then  oxe.  The  result  was,  that,  by 
the  beginning  of  the  Middle  English  period,  the  nomi- 
native, dative,  and  accusative  of  all  nouns,  had  prac- 
tically become  the  same  in  form.  Occasional  instances 
do  occur  of  a  regular  dative  ending  distinct  from  that 
•  f  the  nominative  and  accusative  ;  but  they  are  merely 


Genitive  Singular  of  the  Noun.  219 

scattered  survivals  of  a  distinction  that  was  generally 
disregarded. 

37.  There  was  one  case  of  the  singular,  however, 
which  did  not  share  in  the  general  movement  towards 
simplification.  This  was  the  genitive.  In  the  mascu- 
line and  neuter  nouns  of  the  vowel  declension, '  its 
ending  was  -es ;  and  to  that  it  remained  constant. 
Furthermore,  this  termination  of  these  masculine  and 
neuter  nouns  began,  from  the  commencement  of  the 
Old  English  period,  to  encroach  upon  those  of  the 
genitives  of  the  other  declensions.  Its  only  serious 
competitor  was  the  ending  in  -e.  This  represented 
two  distinct  inflections.  There  was  the  genitive  in  -e 
of  the  feminine  nouns  of  the  vowel  declension,  repre- 
sented by  earn  and  wund.  There  was  another  geni- 
tive in  -e  derived  from  the  -an  of  the  consonant 
declension,  in  which  -an  had  first  become  -en  and 
had  then  dropped  the  -n.  The  Anglo-Saxon  htcefdige, 
which  was  early  cut  down  to  ladye,  'lady,'  is  a  repre- 
sentative of  this  latter  class.  In  this  the  form  for  the 
genitive  was  the  same  as  the  nominative,  and  nothing 
but  the  context  can  determine  with  certainty  the 
case.1  For  a  long  time  genitives  in  -e  from  these  two 
sources  continued  to  be  used  ;  and  they  are  found  as 
late  as  the  literature  of  the  latter  half  of  the  four- 
teenth  century.     But   even   then   they  were  far  from 


1  Lady  from  ladye   in   the  following   line  is  an    example  of  this 
genitive  : 

Which  that  he  seide  was  oure  lady  veyl. 

CHAUCER,  Prologue  to  Canterbury  Tales,  1.  695. 


220  English  Language. 

common  ;  and,  in  the  following  century,  -e  as  a  geni- 
tive ending  died  out  entirely,  and  -es  was  everywhere 
employed  for  all  nouns,  no  matter  what  their  origin. 

38.  One  further  exception  there  was  to  the  una- 
nimity exhibited  in  the  early  adoption  of  the  ending 
-es.  The  /'-stems  which  survived  in  Anglo-Saxon 
belong  to  nouns  indicating  the  family  relation,  such  as 
feeder,  brodor,  triodor.  In  these  the  form  of  the  geni- 
tive was  regularly  the  same  as  that  of  the  nominative. 
This  peculiarity  of  inflection  lasted  down  into  the 
Middle  English  period.  Hence  we  find  in  Chaucer 
such  expressions  as  "by  my  fader  soule,"  ''thy  brother 
sone,"  in  which  fader  and  brother  are  strict  genitive 
forms.  All  these  nouns  — father,  ///other,  brother, 
sister,  and  daughter  —  soon  after  adopted  the  standard 
genitive  ending  -es,  which  had,  indeed,  occasionally 
made  its  appearance  in  some  of  them  at  an  early  period. 

39.  In  the  plural  the  process  of  simplification  was 
even  more  thorough.  Except  in  the  case  of  a  very 
few  nouns,  all  the  endings  were  reduced  to  one.  This 
was  derived  from  the  termination  -as,  found  in  the 
nominative  and  accusative  of  masculine  nouns  of  the 
vowel  declension,  as  stan-as,  end-as.  This  -as  became 
-es  after  the  Conquest,  which  made  its  form  exactly 
the  same  as  that  of  the  genitive  singular,  and  this 
characteristic  it  has  retained  through  all  the  subse- 
quent history  of  the  noun. 

40.  One  plural  termination  there  was  which  was 
common  in  Anglo-Saxon  to  all  nouns  of  whatever 
declension.     This  was  the  -///it  of  the  dative,  which 


Genitive  Plural  of  the  Noun.  221 

has  left  a  trace  of  itself  in  the  adverb  whilom,  origi- 
nally the  dative  plural  hwilum,  from  Invll,  '  while.'  It 
might  naturally  be  expected  that  this  particular  end- 
ing, from  the  very  universality  of  its  use,  would  be 
the  last  to  be  dropped.  On  the  contrary,  it  was  one  </ 
of  the  first  to  give  way.  Its  early  abandonment  is  sus- 
ceptible of  an  easy  explanation.  Even  in  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  monuments  of  the  ninth  century  this  ending  -11m 
frequently  appeared  as  -on  ;  and  the  same  statement 
is  true  of  the  centuries  that  followed.  Within  the 
first  hundred  years  after  the  Conquest,  this  -on,  from 
-//;;/,  not  only  was  much  more  common  than  its  original, 
but  its  vowel  underwent  the  weakening  that  overtook  all 
the  vowels  of  the  endings,  and  the  termination  became 
-en.  This,  in  the  case  of  nouns  of  the  consonant  de- 
clension, gave  it  the  same  form  as  the  nominative  and 
accusative  plural,  the  -an  of  whose  terminations  had 
been  weakened  into  -en  also.  In  the  confusion  that 
soon  sprang  up  in  the  use  of  the  two  leading  declen- 
sions by  the  dropping  or  appending  of  the  final  -;/,  all 
distinctive  character  was  taken  away  from  the  ending 
-um,  after  having  passed  into  -en,  as  specially  belong- 
ing to  the  dative  plural.  It  speedily  adopted,  in  con- 
sequence, the  form  that  was  found  in  the  nominative 
and  accusative,  whether  it  was  the  -es  of  the  vowel  ( 
declension  or  the  -en  of  the  consonant. 

41.  The  genitive  plural  held  out  longer  as  a  distinct 
termination.  At  least  one  form  of  it,  -cue  or  -en,  lasted 
down  to  the  end  of  the  fourteenth  century.  This  -en(e) 
is  derived  from  -ena,  the  regular  termination  of  the  geni- 


222  liugiish  Language. 

tive  plural  of  all  Anglo-Saxon  nouns  of  the  consonant 
declension,  though  in  late  Anglo-Saxon  it  had  made 
its  way  into  a  few  feminine  nouns  of  the  vowel.  Still, 
when  used  in  the  Early  English  period,  it  was  not 
limited  to  either  of  these  inflections.  For  instance, 
in  the  phrase  Christe  kingene  kynge}  'Christ,  King  of 
kings,'  the  word  king  receives  this  termination,  though 
originally  it  was  a  masculine  noun  of  the  vowel  declen- 
sion. But  from  the  very  outset,  after  the  breaking  up 
of  the  inflections  of  the  original  tongue,  the  form  of 
the  genitive  plural  showed  a  tendency  to  assimilate 
itself  to  that  of  the  nominative  and  accusative.  By 
the  beginning  of  the  Middle  English  period,  this  had 
become  the  almost  universally  accepted  rule. 

42.  The  endings  of  those  two  cases,  the  nominative 
and  accusative  plural,  were  at  first  usually  either  -es, 
from  the  -as  of  the  masculine  vowel  declension,  or  -en, 
from  the  -an  of  the  consonant  declension.  Had  these 
been  kept  sharply  distinguished,  and  confined  to  the 
nouns  to  which  they  properly  belonged,  they  would, 
doubtless,  have  both  lasted  to  our  time  ;  but.  in  the 
absence  of  any  standard  of  authority,  they  were  con- 
fused with  one  another,  and  even  applied  at  different 
times  to  the  same  noun,  apparently  at  the  mere  fancy 
of  the  writer.  This  is  at  least  true  of  the  Southern 
dialect.  Language,  however,  is  too  economical  in  the 
use  of  its  material  to  permit  long  the  employment  of 
such  double  forms  on  any  extensive  scale.  One  of 
them  had  to  disappear.      In  our  tongue   it  was   the 

1  Langland's  "Piers  Plowman,"  Texl  1!.  passus  xvii.,  105  (about 
1377). 


Plurals  of  the  Noun.  223 

plural  in  -en.  In  this  simplification  the  Northern  dia- 
lect, as  usual,  led  the  way ;  and  one  of  the  great 
points  of  contrast  between  it  and  the  speech  of  the 
South  was  the  scarcity  of  plurals  in  -en  in  the 
one,  as  compared  with  their  frequency  in  the  other. 
Indeed,  to  this  form  the  Southern  dialect  clung  with 
so  much  tenacity,  that  there  is  little  question  that  a 
large  number  of  nouns  with  this  ending  would  have 
been  now  in  constant  use,  if  that  dialect  had  been  the 
parent  of  Modern  English,  instead  of  the  Midland. 
Not  only  did  the  speech  of  the  South  sometimes  give 
to  the  same  noun  two  plurals,  —  one  in  -es,  and  the 
other  in  -en  •  but  as  has  been  pointed  out,  it  frequently 
gave  the  termination  -en  to  Anglo-Saxon  nouns  of  the 
vowel  declension  as  well  as  to  those  of  the  consonant. 
43.  The  Midland  dialect,  as  usual,  followed  a  path 
between  the  two  extremes.  In  this  respect,  however, 
it  was  influenced  much  more  by  the  example  of  the 
North.  By  the  latter  half  of  the  fourteenth  century 
it  had  generally  discarded  the  ending  -en,  and  the 
ending  -es  had  become  established  as  the  regular 
form.1  In  Chaucer,  the  representative  author  of  the 
literary  speech,  we  find  the  plural  regularly  terminat- 
ing in  -es,  or,  in  certain  cases,  simply  in  -s.  The  only 
relics  of  the  original  plurals  in  -an  to  be  found  in  his 
writings  are  the  following  nine,  —  asshen,  '  ashes  '  ; 
assen,    '  asses  ' ;    been,    '  bees  ' ;    even,    '  eyes  ' ;   fleen, 

1  There  were  orthographic  variations  of  this,  due  to  difference  of 
pronunciation,  such  as  -is,  -ys,  -us;  but  they  do  not  need  to  be  con- 
sidered here. 


224  English  Language. 

'  fleas ' ;  flon,  '  arrows ' ;  hosen, '  hose  ' ;  oxen  ;  and  ton, 
'toes.'  Even  of  these  the  modern  plurals  in  -s  are 
also  to  be  found  employed  by  him  in  the  case  of  ashes, 
bees,  and  toes.  To  this  list  may  be  added  shoon, 
'  shoes,'  which  in  Anglo-Saxon,  however,  belonged 
strictly  to  the  masculine  vowel  declension,  though  it 
had  occasionally  plural  forms  of  the  consonant.  This 
use  of  -s  as  the  regular  termination  of  the  plural,  then 
firmly  established,  was  never  after  subjected  to  change. 
It  ought  to  be  added  that  the  third  plural  in  -e,  already 
described  (32),  had  died  out  entirely;  at  least,  in  the 
confused  use  of  final  -e,  which  had  become  current, 
it  was  no  longer  recognizable  as  distinct  from  the  neu- 
ter forms  which  are  now  to  be  described. 

44.  There  is  one  fact  which  becomes  apparent  upon 
a  close  examination  of  the  neuter  monosyllabic  nouns 
of  the  vowel  declension  (25).  It  is,  that  such  of  the 
nouns  as  had  the  radical  vowel  long  did  not  assume 
the  ending  -//  in  the  nominative  and  accusative  plural. 
Nothing  was  added  to  the  singular.  Accordingly  the 
forms  for  these  two  cases  would  be  precisely  alike  in 
both  numbers.  This  was  true  whether  the  vowel  was 
li  >ng  by  nature,  as  in  hus,  '  house  '  ;  gear, '  year  J ;  deor, 
'animal  '  ;  or  long  by  position  before  two  consonants, 
as  in  hors,  'horse';  ping,  '  thing ' ;  and  folc,  'folk.' 
Naturally,  therefore,  these  nouns,  even  after  the 
break-up  of  Anglo-Saxon,  would  be  apt  to  have 
their  plurals  of  the  same  form  as  the  singular.  But 
during  the  old  English  period  most  of  these  neuters 
came  gradually  to  conform  to  the  declension  of  the 


Plural  of  Natter  Nouns.  225 

masculine  nouns.  They,  in  consequence,  assumed  -es 
in  the  plural.  Occasionally  some  of  them  seem  to 
have  adopted  -e,  the  weakened  form  of  the  -//  final  of 
the  plural  of  neuter  nouns  of  the  same  declension, 
whose  vowel  was  short.  This  was  not  often  the  case, 
however,  and  is  from  its  very  nature  attended  with 
uncertainty.  The  nominative  singular  itself  was  fre- 
quently disposed  to  assume  a  final  -e.  It  becomes, 
therefore,  impossible  to  say  whether  -<?,  when  it  occurs 
in  the  plural,  is  to  be  considered,  in  any  particular 
instance,  as  a  plural  termination,  or  a  mere  inorganic 
addition  to  the  word.  But  there  is  no  question  that 
by  Chaucer's  time  the  vast  majority  had  accepted  the 
plural  in  -es.  Still  some,  such  as  thing,  and  hors,  and 
folk,  and  year,  were  in  a  state  of  transition,  and  exhib- 
ited double  forms,  —  one  ending  in  -es,  the  other  pre- 
cisely resembling  the  singular.  In  the  case  of  certain 
of  these  words  this  same  state  of  things  continues  to 
our  day.  A  very  few  held  on  to  the  ancient  inflection 
and  never  underwent  any  further  change. 

45.  If  a  comparison,  accordingly,  be  made  between 
the  literary  language  at  the  beginning  of  the  Middle 
English  period  and  that  prevalent  during  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  period,  it  will  be  observed  that,  in  the  centuries 
which  intervened,  the  four  cases  of  the  noun,  so  far  as 
they  had  been  distinguished  by  differences  of  form  in 
the  singular,  had  now  been  reduced  to  two.  Again,  in 
the  Anglo-Saxon  plural,  the  nominative  and  accusative 
had  never  had  any  distinction  of  form  ;  but  there  had 
been  special  forms  for  the  genitive  and  dative.    These 


226  English  Language. 

various  terminations  had  now  all  been  reduced  to  one, 
and  that  was,  with  a  very  few  exceptions,  the  one 
which  ended  in  -cs.  Accordingly,  the  paradigm  of 
the  Anglo-Saxon  s/an,  which  had  now  come  to  stand 
as  the  general  representative  of  the  noun  inflection, 
was  the  following  :  — 

Singular.  Plural. 

Norn.,  Dat.,  and  Acc.     stem  or  stone,  All  Cases,     stones. 

Genitive,     stones. 

It  is  evident  at  a  glance  that  this  is  practically  the 
Modern  English  declension.  The  few  slight  changes 
that  have  since  occurred  are  nothing  but  a  natural 
development  of  the  tendency  that  had  already  brought 
the  inflection  of  the  noun  to  this  point.  The  later 
history  of  the  inflection  will  clearly  show  that  the 
main  differences  between  our  declension  to-day  and 
that  of  the  fourteenth  century  are  all  due  to  a  more 
hurried  pronunciation.  Other  differences  are  appar- 
ent and  not  real,  inasmuch  as  they  are  differences  in 
the  representation  of  the  sounds,  and  not  in  the  sounds 
themselves.  These  will  be  considered  in  their  regular 
order.     The  first  concerns  the  termination  -e. 

46.  At  the  beginning  of  the  Middle  English  period, 
nouns  which  had  originally  ended  in  a  vowel  almost 
invariably  ended  in  -e ;  and  this  -e,  we  have  seen,  was 
frequently  assumed  by  nouns  which  originally  ended 
in  a  consonant,  and  were,  therefore,  not  strictly  entitled 
to  it.  But,  between  the  fourteenth  and  sixteenth  cen- 
turies, the   final   -e,  whether  etvinologieally  belonging 


Final  E  of  the  Noun.  227 

to  the  word  or  not,  disappeared  from  pronunciation. 
In  the  lawless  and  capricious  spelling  of  the  language 
that  sprang  up  after  the  invention  of  printing,  the 
retention  of  this  letter  in  the  orthography  came  to 
be  a  mere  matter  of  accident.  The  words  given  in 
the  Anglo-Saxon  paradigms  are  sufficient  to  serve  as 
examples.  Of  the  modern  representatives  of  these, 
stone  and  horse  now  terminate  in  an  -e,  to  which  they 
are  not  etymologically  entitled  :  while  end  has  given 
up  the  -e  to  which  it  is  entitled.  On  the  other  hand, 
care,  tongue,  and  eye  conform  to  their  original  in  hav- 
ing a  final  vowel,  and  ship  and  wound  conform  to 
theirs  in  not  having  one.  Furthermore,  oxa  some- 
times appears  in  modern  orthography  as  oxe,  but  more 
usually  as  ox. 

47.  In  the  early  part  of  the  Middle  English  period 
the  -es  of  the  genitive  singular  and  of  the  plural  still 
appeared  as  a  distinct  syllable.  Thus,  for  illustration, 
stones  was  at  that  time  pronounced  as  a  dissyllable, 
and  not  as  now  as  a  monosyllable.  But  even  then 
this  practice  was  showing  signs  of  passing  away.  In 
the  fifteenth  century  its  abandonment  went  on  rapidly.  1/ 
By  the  beginning  of  the  Modern  English  period,  the 
final  -es  had  ceased  to  be  pronounced  as  a  separate 
syllable,  save  in  those  cases  where  the  nature  of  the 
word  still  requires  it  to  be  sounded,  as  in  foxes,  horses. 
The  dropping  of  the  unpronounced  e  was  a  result 
that  ultimately  followed  in  those  nouns  which  did  not 
retain  an  -e  in  the  nominative  singular.  Thus  arm 
gave  up  amies  and  became  arms,  day  gave  up  dayes 


228  English  Language. 

and  became  days,  and  lord  gave,  up  lordes  and  became 
lords.  This  discarding  of  the  c  of  -<?.«•  had  previously 
taken  place  on  a  large  scale  in  the  case  of  polysyllabic 
words,  those  in  particular  that  ended  in  a  liquid.  In 
Chaucer,  for  illustration,  we  have  servaunts,  pilgrims, 
naciouns,  where  the  -s  is  added  directly  to  the  stem. 
While  the  fuller  form  -es  sometimes  occurs  in  words 
of  this  class,  it  is  far  from  being  so  common. 

48.  Another  peculiarity  is  now  found  in  the  declen- 
sion of  the  noun,  though  the  consideration  of  it 
belongs  rather  to  punctuation  than  to  inflection.  In 
the  seventeenth  century  the  practice  of  distinguishing 
the  genitive  singular  from  the  plural  came  into  vogue 
by  placing  an  apostrophe  before  the  final  -s  of  the 
former  ;  but  it  was  not  till  the  eighteenth  century  that 
this  became  fully  established.  It  was  in  time  followed 
by  adopting  the  still  further  distinction  of  placing  an 
apostrophe  after  the  -s  of  the  genitive  plural ;  so  that, 
for  example,  the  genitive  singular  boy's,  and  the  geni- 
tive plural  boys1,  though  spelled  and  pronounced  alike, 
are  in  reading  easily  recognized  as  different. 

49.  The  genitive  case  has  likewise  come  to  be  so 
limited  in  usage  as  to  express  ordinarily  the  relation 
of  possession,  and,  in  conseiiuence,  most  grammarians 
give  it  the  title  of  "possessive."  This  is,  however,  an 
unfortunate  name  ;  for,  while  this  is  the  relation  it 
expresses  principally,  it  is  by  no  means  the  one  it 
expresses  exclusively,  furthermore,  as  the  dative  and 
a<  1  usative  have  lost  all  distinction  of  form  in  both 
nouns  and  pronouns,  the  name  of  "  objective  "  is  gen- 


Irregular  Inflection  of  the  Noun.        229 

erally  given  by  modern  grammarians  to  the  case  ex- 
pressing the  relations  of  direct  and  indirect  object, 
formerly  expressed  by  the  two.  The  indirect  relation 
is,  to  be  sure,  usually  indicated  by  a  preposition  with 
the  noun  ;  but  it  is  not  so  invariably.  In  such  a  sen- 
tence as  '  He  gave  the  boy  a  book,'  boy  denotes  the 
original  dative  of  the  indirect,  and  book  the  original 
accusative  of  the  direct  object. 

50.  The  plural  form  of  nearly  all  nouns  had  come, 
in  the  fourteenth  century,  to  be  precisely  the  same  as 
that  of  the  genitive  singular  ;  and  the  later  history  of 
the  one  differs  in  no  respect  whatever  from  the  later 
history  of  the  other.  When  the  e  was  dropped  in  the 
genitive  ending  -es,  it  was  also  dropped  in  the  endings 
of  the  plural :  when  it  was  retained  in  the  former,  it 
was  retained  in  the  latter.  The  account  just  given  of 
the  one,  therefore,  involves  that  of  the  other. 

51.  This  completes  the  history  of  what  may  be 
called  the  regular  inflection  of  the  noun.  It  now  re- 
mains to  consider  the  comparatively  few  words,  which, 
in  spite  of  the  pressure  always  at  work  to  produce  uni- 
formity, have  steadily  resisted  the  tendency  to  go  over 
to  the  declension  which  in  the  fourteenth  century  had 
become  the  standard  one.  These  belong  to  four 
classes ;  and  in  all  of  them  it  is  the  method  alone  of 
forming  the  plural  that  distinguishes  their  inflection 
from  the  rest. 

52.  The  first  of  these  embraces  the  neuter  mono- 
syllabic nouns  already  spoken  of  (44)  as  exhibiting 
no   difference  of  form    between   the    nominative  and 


230  English  Language. 

accusative  singular  and  plural.  While  nearly  all  of 
these  had  gone  over  to  the  ordinary  inflection  in  -s,  a 
few  held  out,  and  to  this  day  have  remained  faithful 
to  the  original  inflection.  The  more  marked  exam- 
ples among  these  are  deer  and  sheep,  which  now  never 
add  anything  to  form  the  plural.  This  was  not  always 
so,  however.  In  Early  English,  deer,  for  example,  can 
be  found  in  different  writers  either  with  no  termina- 
tion in  the  plural,  or  with  the  ending  -es,  or  with  the 
ending  -en.  The  two  other  words,  swine  and  neat, 
ordinarily  classed  with  the  two  preceding,  are  now 
rarely  used  save  in  a  collective  sense.  But  during  the 
Old  and  Middle  English  periods  there  was  great 
diversity  of  usage  in  the  case  of  certain  of  these 
words,  such  as  thing,  and  folk,  and  horse,  and  year, 
and  to  some  extent  this  continues  to  prevail  in  our 
own  day.  Still  the  tendency  was  always  toward  the 
exclusive  adoption  of  the  regular  inflection  by  these 
words. 

53.  But  beside  the  use  of  the  singular  form  of  cer- 
tain words  in  a  collective  sense,  there  are  to  be  found 
in  our  language  no  small  number  of  nouns  which  under 
special  circumstances,  or  in  special  significations,  un- 
dergo no  change  in  forming  the  plural.  They  usually 
denote  measure,  size,  weight,  periods  of  time,  or  spe- 
cies. In  most  instances  it  is  no  easy  matter  to  de- 
termine how  this  practice  originated.  In  the  case  of 
pound and yoke  it  could  be  considered  as  representing 
the  original  inflection  of  the  neuter  noun  of  the  vowel 
declension.    But  several  of  these  words  —  such  as/^>/, 


Irregular  Plurals  of  the  Noun.         231 

fathom,  mile,  sail,  score,  stone,  and  tun  —  come  from 
Anglo-Saxon  nouns  of  other  declensions.  Furthermore, 
this  practice  was  early  extended  to  words  from  Romance 
sources.  In  Chaucer,  for  illustration,  vers  and  cas 
mean  '  verses '  and  '  cases,'  as  well  as  '  verse '  and  '  case.' 
We  have,  likewise,  in  Modern  English  a  similar  usage 
of  Romance  words,  such  as  bushel,  brace,  couple,  dozen, 
gross,  and  pair.  With  certain  of  these  words,  such  as 
gross,  in  the  sense  of  '  twelve  dozen,'  or  sail,  in  the 
sense  of  '  vessel,'  as  '  fifty  sail,'  the  regular  form  in  -s 
is  unusual  and  perhaps  unknown.  Names  of  a  few 
animals  and  of  several  species  of  fish  have  no  change 
of  form  in  the  plural  occasionally,  and  in  some  in- 
stances invariably.  In  general,  however,  it  may  be 
said  that  the  modern  language  shows  an  increasing 
preference  for  the  plural  in  -s.  But  there  continue 
to  be  many  words,  such  as  pair  and  pairs,  score  and 
scores,  couple  and  couples,  in  which  the  frequency  of 
the  form  either  with  or  without  -s  varies  with  indi- 
vidual usage,  or  with  the  peculiar  sense  intended  to  be 
conveyed. 

54.  The  second  class  includes  a  few  nouns,  which, 
in  the  English  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  period,  invariably 
underwent  vowel-modification  (19)  in  the  nominative 
and  accusative  plural,  and  have  in  some  cases  trans- 
mitted these  modified  forms  to  the  English  of  our  day. 
This  was  originally  due,  as  has  been  explained,  to  the 
influence  of  a  following  vowel  ;  and,  while  the  vowel 
once  following  has  been  dropped,  the  vowel-modifica- 
tion wrought  by  it  remains.     In  the  instances  about 


2 $2  English  Language. 

to  be  cited,  it  was  an  i  that  has  disappeared,  which 
brought  about  the  variation  of  o  to  e,  of  u  to  y,  and  of 
a  to  e.  There  were  about  a  score  of  these  nouns  in 
Anglo-Saxon,  of  which  the  following  eight  survive  in 
Modern  English.  In  the  list  as  here  given  the  nomi- 
native singular  and  plural  are  placed  side  by  side  :  — 

Singular.  Plural.    I    Singular.  Plural. 


broc,  breeches,  brec. 

fot,  foot,  fet. 

gos,  goose,  ges. 

toS,  tooth,  te5. 


cu,  coxv,  cy. 

lus,  louse,  lys. 

mus,  mouse,  mys. 

man,  ma>i,  men. 


That  this  modification  of  the  vowel  was  not  in  itself  a 
sign  of  the  plural  is  at  once  made  clear  by  the  fact 
that,  in  Anglo-Saxon,  the  dative  singular  had  invaria- 
bly in  these  words,  and  the  genitive  singular  had  oc- 
casionally, precisely  the  same  form  as  the  nominative 
plural. 

55.  Of  the  nouns  just  mentioned  the  form  repre- 
senting broc,  with  the  vowel  o,  does  not  seem  to  have 
been  in  use  after  the  Conquest.  Its  place  was  taken, 
as  early  as  the  twelfth  century,  by  birch,  breech,  from 
brec,  and  this  in  turn  has  been  supplanted  by  the  form 
with  the  plural  ending  -es.  The  original  plural  of  cu 
was  retained  in  the  speech  of  the  North,  and  is  still 
found  in  the  kye  of  the  Scotch  dialect.  But  another 
plural  form,  kine,  had  shown  itself  as  early,  certainly, 
as  the  beginning  of  the  fourteenth  century,  and  later 
ime  established  in  the  language  of  literature.  Its 
origin  will  be  indicated  in  the  remarks  upon  the  third 


Irregular  Plurals  of  the  Noun.  233 

class  (57).  The  remaining  six,  foot,  goose,  tooth, 
louse,  mouse,  and  man,  have  remained  unchanged,  in 
respect  to  vowel-modification,  during  all  the  periods 
in  the  history  of  the  language.  Still,  sporadic  in- 
stances occur,  in  which  the  regular  ending  -s  appears, 
with  the  vowel  unmodified  in  the  case  of  several  of 
these  words,  giving,  for  example,  such  forms  as  foots, 
mouses,  and  mans. 

56.  In  the  third  class  are  embraced  the  few  nouns 
which  still  exhibit  the  ending  in  -;/,  once  common  to 
half  the  substantives  of  the  language.  It  has  already 
been  stated  that,  in  the  confusion  that  sprang  up  in 
the  use  of  the  vowel  and  consonant  declensions,  it  was 
one  of  the  inflections  of  the  former  that  had  triumphed 
over  all  the  others.  Of  the  nine  words  belonging  to 
the  original  consonant  declension  that  are  used  by 
Chaucer  (43),  three  are  likewise  to  be  found  with 
plurals  in  -s,  clearly  showing  that  the  transition  to  the 
generally  accepted  form  was  going  on.  It  continued 
to  go  on  with  unabated  vigor  after  his  death.  By  the 
beginning  of  the  Modern  English  period,  the  only 
genuine  historical  plural  in  -11  that  was  used  in  prose 
and  poetry  was  oxen.  Even  during  the  fourteenth 
century  the  form  oxes  is  occasionally  found.1  Even, 
moreover,  continued  to  be  employed,  but  it  was  looked 
upon  then,  as  now,  merely  as  a  poetic  form.  Of  the 
vast  number  of  nouns  originally  belonging  to  the  con- 
sonant declension,  ox  is,  therefore,  the  solitary  survival 

1  E.g.     "Droves  of  axis  and  flockis    of  sheep." — Judith,  ii.  3 
( Purvey 's  Recension). 


234  English  Language. 

in  Modern  English,  and  even  that,  in  the  singular 
number,  conforms  to  the  vowel  declension.  It  is  to 
be  added  that  hosen,  which  Chaucer  used,  dropped  its 
-//,  but  did  not  add  an  -s. 

57.  At  the  same  time,  during  this  long  conflict,  the 
consonant  declension  did  not  fail  to  add  some  words 
to  its  numbers.  In  fact,  in  the  Southern  dialect, 
many  nouns,  as  we  have  seen,  belonging  to  the  vowel 
declension,  formed  their  plural  in  -n.  The  literary  lan- 
guage of  the  Midland,  however,  in  the  latter  half  of  the 
fourteenth  century,  had  almost  entirely  discarded  this 
termination  ;  though,  as  might  be  expected,  there  is 
a  slight  difference  of  usage  in  the  writings  of  different 
authors.  Taking  Chaucer  as  the  representative  of  this 
period,  the  following  statement  can  be  made  in  regard 
to  these  forms.  There  are  six  words,  as  employed  by 
him,  which  still  continue  to  show  in  the  plural  a  final 
-n  derived  from  the  plural  of  the  consonant  inflection. 
Not  one  of  these  six,  however,  belonged  to  the  two 
leading  Anglo  Saxon  declensions.  All  of  them  exhib- 
ited irregularities  in  the  earliest  speech.  Here  will 
be  given,  side  by  side,  the  Anglo-Saxon  form,  the  Old 
English  intermediate  form,  and  the  Middle  English 
form  of  the  plural  ;  though  there  are  numerous  ortho- 
graphic variations  of  all  of  them,  which  will  not  be 
noticed  here  :  — 

\n    I  '     .ixon.  Old  English.  Middle  English. 

lirotlire,  ) 

'  rcthcren. 


l.ioNru,  > 

brethrc.  > 


brethrc, 
dohtru,  dohtere,  iloughtren. 


Irregular  Plurals  of  the  Noun.  235 


Lnglo-Saxon. 

Old  English. 

Middle  English. 

sweostru, 

sustre, 

sustren. 

cildru, 

childre, 

children. 

fah,  hostile, 

fon, 

fon. 

cy,  or  eye, 

kye, 

kyn. 

58.  Of  these  words  daughter,  sister,  and  foe  exhibit 
in  Chaucer's  usage,  if  the  manuscripts  can  be  trusted, 
plurals  both  in  -n  and  in  -s.  By  the  beginning  of  the 
Modern  English  period  all,  however,  had  assumed  the 
latter  termination.  Each  of  the  three  other  words  has 
had  a  history  of  its  own.  The  present  strictly  regular 
form  brothers  has  been  found  in  Layamon's  "  Brut " 
belonging  to  the  Old  English  period,  but  it  can  scarcely 
be  said  to  have  come  into  use  till  the  sixteenth  century. 
Up  to  that  time  brethren  was  the  form  regularly  em- 
ployed. In  the  century  just  mentioned  brothers  was 
revived,  or  again  developed,  and  in  the  seventeenth 
century  came  to  be  preferred.  The  language  still 
retains  the  two  plurals,  but  ordinarily  makes  a  slight 
distinction  in  their  usage. 

59.  Child  has  even  a  more  peculiar  history.  Its 
Anglo-Saxon  original,  did,  had  several  ways  of  forming 
the  plural,  but  cildru  finally  came  to  be  the  prevailing 
one.  This  assimilated  the  inflection  of  the  word  to 
that  of  a  small  class  of  Anglo-Saxon  nouns,  of  which 
lamb,  ealf,  and  egg  are  the  modern  representatives. 
These  originally  added  r-u  to  form  the  plural,  and  in 
later  English  developed  not  only  the  regular  plural  in 
-es,  but  the  plurals  lambren,  calveren,  and  eyren.     In  all 


236  English  Language. 

of  these  now  disused  forms  the  -n  of  the  consonant 
declension  has  been  added  to  the  weakened  original 
inflection.  Child  went  through  essentially  the  same 
process,  developing  in  the  North  of  England  the  plural 
childre,  childer,  and  in  the  South  adding  to  this  form  the 
ending  -//.  This  early  became,  and  has  since  remained, 
the  standard  form.  The  plurals  which  cu,  '  cow,'  de- 
veloped have  been  already  given  (55).  It  need  only 
be  added  that  it  was  apparently  not  until  the  seven- 
teenth century  that  the  strictly  regular  form  '  cows ' 
came  into  use.  It  is  not  found  in  Shakspeare,  or  in 
our  version  of  the  Bible.  Kine  even  now  continues 
to  be  employed,  but  as  a  general  rule  it  belongs  rather 
to  the  language  of  poetry  than  of  prose. 

60.  There  now  remains  the  fourth  class  to  be  con- 
sidered, —  that  of  the  foreign  nouns  that  have  been 
imperfectly  Anglicized,  and  still  retain,  in  conse- 
quence, the  plural  they  had  in  the  tongue  from  which 
they  were  taken.  Naturally  the  endings  are  very 
diverse.  Most  of  these  words  have  been  introduced 
during  the  Modern  English  period  ;  many  are  terms 
connected  with  the  natural  or  physical  sciences.  A 
large  number  of  them  are,  therefore,  technical  in  their 
character  ;  and  of  all  of  them  it  is  true,  that,  at  first, 
they  are  only  employed  by  the  educated.  So  long  as 
their  use  was  limited  to  this  (lass,  they  underwent  no 
change.  The  original  plural,  no  matter  what  might  be 
its  ending,  was  rigidly  retained.  But  no  sooner  did 
they  cease  to  be  purely  technical  than  they  were  at 
Once    iiiti  ted    by  the    tendency  of   the    language   to 


Irregular  Plurals  of  the  Noun.  237 

strive  after  uniformity.  With  many  of  them,  in  conse- 
quence, the  English  plural  in  -s  either  superseded  the 
foreign  plural  altogether,  or  became  established  along- 
side of  it.  It  has  been  pointed  out  elsewhere  how 
that,  in  obedience  to  this  rule,  omens  has  driven  out 
the  original  plural  omina,  once  in  use,  and  dogmas  has 
almost  entirely  taken  the  place  of  dogmata;  while,  on 
the  other  hand,  formulae  and  formulas  may  be  said 
to  be  equally  common,  though,  in  technical  works,  the 
former  is  perhaps  preferred.1 

61.  Here  it  is  that  the  counteracting  influence  of 
the  literary  language  makes  itself  felt.  Were  it  not  for 
this,  it  is  fairly  certain  that  the  large  majority  of  the 
foreign  words  that  come  to  be  generally  employed 
would  be  fully  Anglicized,  and  adopt  the  regular  plural 
in  -s.  But  in  many  cases  the  agency  of  the  literary 
language  makes  the  foreign  plural  perfectly  familiar  to 
all,  and  it  becomes  in  time  too  well  established  to  be 
discarded.  In  some  kinds  of  words  the  difficulty  of 
pronouncing  what  would  be  the  Anglicized  form  tends 
to  perpetuate  the  original  one.  This  is  familiarly  seen 
in  Latin  nouns  in  -is  whose  plural  ends  in  -es,  such  as 
ellipsis,  ellipses ;  hypothesis,  hypotheses ;  oasis,  oases, 
and  others  ;  or,  in  Latin  nouns  in  -es,  in  which  the 
plural  is  the  same  as  the  singular,  like  series  and 
species.  But  there  are  other  cases  in  which  the  for- 
eign form  maintains  itself  without  such  aid.  The 
plural  genera,  from  genus,  for  example,  is  so  firmly 
established  that  genuses,  from  present  appearances, 
can  have  no  hope  of  ever  being  adopted. 

1  See  page  147. 


238  English  Language. 

62.  It  is  natural,  however,  that,  in  many  of  these 
nouns,  double  forms  should  be  produced,  and  indeed 
continue  to  increase  as  the  words  pass  more  and  more 
from  technical  into  common  usage.  The  uneducated, 
or  rather  those  not  specially  educated,  cannot  be 
expected  to  know  the  foreign  plurals  ;  and  the  substi- 
tution of  the  English  plural  sign  -s  gets  rid,  by  an  easy 
process,  of  all  doubts  and  difficulties.  Consequently 
we  have  apparatus  and  apparatuses,  radii  and  radi- 
uses, memoranda  and  memorandums,  phenomena  and 
phenomenons,  vortices  and  vortexes,  virtuosi  and  vir- 
tuosos, and  numerous  other  double  forms.  In  some 
cases  there  is  a  difference  of  meaning  between  these  two 
plurals,  as,  for  instance,  between  genii  and  geniuses, 
indices  and  indexes.  In  this  respect  the  word  stamen 
reverses  the  usual  order  of  things  ;  for  while,  in  science, 
the  Anglicized  plural  stamens  is  the  form  employed, 
it  is  the  foreign  plural  stamina  that  is  heard  in  the 
language  of  common  life. 

63.  It  is  clear  that  the  use  of  foreign  plurals  is  cer- 
tain, in  some  cases,  to  result  in  confusion.  The  great 
majority  of  men  who  speak  English  cannot  be  ex- 
pected to  be  familiar  with  any  speech  but  their  own  ; 
and  when  endings  are  introduced  of  whose  force  they 
are  ignorant,  it  is  impossible  that  they  should  in  every 
instance  use  them  with  exact  propriety.  Such  termi- 
nations are  in  the  nature  of  exceptions  to  a  general 
rule,  and  the  exceptions  are  but  few  which  men  will 
take  the  trouble  to  learn.  It  is  too  much  to  ask  of 
those   whose    acquaintance  with    language   is  limited 


Foreign  Plurals  of the  Noun.  239 

only  to  their  own,  or  even  to  the  modern  tongues,  to 
be  aware  that  stamina  and  effluvia  and  errata  are 
plurals  of  the  Latin  nouns  stamen,  effluvium,  and 
erratum.  The  fact,  if  known  to  them  at  all,  must 
be  learned  in  each  particular  instance.  Under  such 
circumstances,  mistakes  in  usage  are  almost  sure  to 
arise.  In  the  case  of  the  words  just  mentioned, 
effluvia  and  errata  have  frequently  been  treated  as 
singulars  and  have  developed  the  plurals  effluvias  and 
erratas.  These  forms  were  not  uncommon  as  far 
back  as  the  seventeenth  century,  and  have  at  times 
been  used  by  writers  of  some  repute.  So  at  the  pres- 
ent day  the  plural  stamina  is  sometimes  treated  as  a 
singular. 

64.  No  better  exemplification  of  the  results  of  this 
confusion  can  be  found  than  in  the  history  of  the  two 
words  cherub  and  seraph.  Their  respective  plurals  in 
the  Hebrew,  from  which  they  were  borrowed,  were 
cherubim  and  seraphim ;  and  these  forms  naturally 
were  the  ones  first  used  for  that  number,  though  with 
the  ending  -in  instead  of  -im.  At  this  point  confu- 
sion came  in.  Cherubim  and  seraphim  were  not  felt 
to  be  plurals.  The  result  was,  that  they  were  treated 
as  singulars  ;  and,  being  looked  upon  as  singulars, 
they  themselves,  though  really  plurals,  received  the 
English  plural  sign  -s  in  addition.  Consequently  the 
plurals  with  this  termination  came  into  wide  use  ;  and 
this  corruption  was  thoroughly  established  in  the  lan- 
guage before  the  Middle  English  period.  How  firmly 
fixed   it  had   become  is  evident  from   the   fact   that 


240  English  Language. 

these  are  the  only  forms  employed  by  the  translators 
of  the  English  Bible,  though  they  were,  of  course, 
acquainted  with  the  Hebrew.  But  in  the  sixteenth 
century  the  language  also  developed  the  regular  Eng- 
lish forms  cherubs  and  seraphs,  which  are  the  plurals 
now  generally  found.  Still  the  fact  remains  that  there 
have  been  and  are  in  authorized  usage  two  singular 
and  three  plural  forms  of  these  words,  as  may  be 
illustrated  by  cherub  and  cherubim  for  the  one,  and 
cherubs,  cherubim,  and  cherubims  for  the  other. 

65.  Of  these  four  classes  of  nouns,  the  plurals  of 
which  vary  from  the  regular  plural,  this  only  remains 
to  be  said  :  whenever  the  genitive  is  employed,  they 
assume  an  -s,  after  the  manner  of  the  ordinary  inflec- 
tion. This,  in  a  few  instances,  renders  the  genitive 
plural  different  from  the  nominative  plural.  In  the 
case  of  the  nouns  which  undergo  vowel-modification, 
that  variation  causes  necessarily  the  genitive  plural  to 
differ  in  form  from  the  genitive  singular,  as  man's, 
men's.  These  complete  all  the  exceptions  to  the 
regular  inflection  that  Modern  English  presents  out- 
side of  purely  euphonic  ones,  such  as  the  dropping  of 
the  sound  of  s,  and  sometimes  of  its  sign,  in  the  geni- 
tive of  words  which  themselves  terminate  in  the  sound 
of  s,  as  may  be  illustrated  by  such  phrases  as  "  for 
conscience'  sake,"  and  the  like. 


CHAPTER   III. 
THE  ADJECTIVE. 

66.  The  English  noun,  in  the  course  of  its  history, 
has  been  largely  stripped  of  its  inflections  ;  but  its 
losses  bear  little  proportion  to  those  of  the  adjective. 
To  a  certain  extent,  the  same  influences  operated  upon 
both.  Together  they  underwent  the  changes  that  were 
brought  about  by  the  weakening  of  the  vowels  a,  o, 
and  it  to  e.  Together  they  suffered  from  the  dropping 
of  the  final  -;/.  The  results,  accordingly,  which  fol- 
lowed in  the  one  case  took  place  likewise  in  the  other, 
and  do  not  need  to  be  repeated.  But  the  losses  of 
the  adjective  at  even  an  early  period  were  far  more 
extensive  than  those  of  the  noun,  as  the  confusion  of 
the  declensions  was  also  much  greater.  With  this  part 
of  speech,  inflection  has  now  entirely  disappeared. 
One  unchanged  form  has  taken  the  place  of  the  mani- 
fold ones  originally  used  to  express,  not  merely  the 
distinction  of  gender,  number,  and  case,  but  also  of 
declension. 

67.  During  the  Anglo-Saxon  period  the  adjective 
was  distinguished  by  the  possession  of  the  following 
characteristics  :  — 

241 


242  English  Language. 

1.  Two  declensions. 

2.  Forms  differing,  to  a  great  extent,  for  the  three 
genders,  —  the  masculine,  the  feminine,  and  the 
neuter. 

3.  Two  numbers,  the  singular  and  the  plural,  with 
marked  differences  of  forms  for  each. 

4.  Four  cases,  —  the  nominative,  genitive,  dative, 
and  accusative.  To  these  most  grammarians  add  a 
fifth,  the  instrumental,  ending  in  -<?,  which,  in  the 
paradigms  found  below,  is  put  down  as  a  secondary 
form  of  the  dative,  corresponding  to  the  dative  of 
the  masculine  and  neuter  nouns  of  the  vowel  declen- 
sion of  the  noun.  Those  who  regard  these  forms  as 
belonging  to  the  instrumental  once  made  the  final 
-<?  long  (-e),  as  in  the  similar  case  of  the  noun  (24). 

68.  Rich  as  the  adjective  evidently  was  in  inflection 
during  the  Anglo-Saxon  period,  it  is  manifest  that  even 
then  it  had  suffered  losses.  The  vowels  o,  i,  and  u 
may  all  have  been  added  to  the  stem  of  the  adjective 
as  to  that  of  the  noun  (9)  in  the  primitive  Teutonic  ; 
but  even  in  the  Gothic,  the  earliest  of  the  Teutonic 
languages,  the  stems  in  i  had  practically  disappeared. 
Stems  in  //  were  still  to  be  found  in  that  tongue; 
but  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  they  had  given  way  almost 
entirely  to  stems  in  0,  which  had  practically  become 
universal. 

69.  The  Teutonic  adjective  differs  from  the  adjec- 
tive of  other  groups  of  languages  belonging  to  the 
Indo-European  family  in  two  respects.  The  first  is, 
that  nearly  every  adjective  is  declined  in  two  different 


Declensions  of  the  Adjective.  243 

ways.  The  second  is,  that  one  of  these  declensions 
is  distinct  from  that  of  the  noun,  and  has  largely,  in- 
stead, the  inflections  of  the  pronoun.  For  this  reason 
one  name  given  to  this  latter  declension  is  the  "pro- 
nominal." For  a  similar  cause,  therefore,  the  other 
declension  is  also  called  sometimes  the  "  nominal " 
or  noun  declension,  because,  with  the  exception  of  the 
genitive  plural,  its  forms  correspond  with  those  found 
in  the  corresponding  masculine,  feminine,  and  neuter 
nouns  of  the  //-declension  of  the  noun.  The  most 
common  terms,  however,  applied  to  the  two  inflections 
are  "  strong  "  and  "  weak." 

70.  There  are,  in  addition,  other  names,  derived 
from  the  use  of  the  adjective,  which  will  be  the 
ones  employed  here.  The  adjective  was  usually  de- 
clined according  to  the  nominal  or  weak  declension, 
when  the  substantive  which  it  qualified  was  made 
definite,  by  connecting  with  the  qualifying  adjective 
the  definite  article,  or  a  demonstrative  or  possessive 
pronoun ;  but,  when  the  adjective  was  simply  used 
alone,  the  substantive  was,  as  a  consequence,  indefi- 
nite ;  and  the  adjective  was  inflected,  in  such  cases, 
according  to  the  pronominal  or  strong  declension. 
Hence  have  arisen  the  terms  "definite  "  and  "  indefi- 
nite "  as  applied  to  the  inflection  of  the  adjective. 
This  double  declension  —  a  peculiar,  and  it  must  be 
said  useless,  characteristic  of  the  primitive  Teutonic  — 
has  wholly  disappeared  in  English,  but  still  survives 
in  modern  High  German. 

71.  The  following  paradigms  of  the  adjective  blind, 


244 


Engl  is  Ji  L  a  nguagt  • . 


'  blind,'  inflected  both  ways,  will  show  the  forms  of 
the  language  as  they  are  generally  found  in  the  writings 
of  the  tenth  and  eleventh  centuries.  But  during  the 
Anglo-Saxon  period  itself  there  was  a  good  deal  of 
sloughing  off  of  the  terminations  of  the  adjective  in 
the  indefinite  declension,  thereby  reducing  them  to 
the  same  form.  Thus  the  nominative  singular  and 
plural  feminine  had  frequently  a  distinct  ending  in 
-u  and  -a,  respectively.  The  neuter  of  the  nomina- 
tive and  accusative  plural  also  sometimes  ended  in  -//. 
In  general,  it  may  be  said,  that  survivals  of  an  earlier 
usage  are  apt  to  make  their  appearance  in  later  Anglo- 
Saxon. 

72.    Indefinite  (Pronominal  or  Strong)   Declension. 


SINGULAR. 

PLURAL. 

Masculine. 

Feminine. 

Neuter. 

All  Genders 

Nom, 

blind, 

blind, 

blind, 

blinde, 

Gen. 

blindes, 

blindre, 

blindes, 

blindra, 

Dat. 

(  blindum,  •> 
I  blinde,     / 

blindre, 

1  blindum,  ~i 
1  blinde,      1 

blindum, 

Ace. 

blindne, 

blinde, 

blind. 

blinde. 

73.    Definite  (Nominal  or  Weak)  Declension. 


SINGULAR. 

PLURAL. 

Masculine. 

Feminine. 

Neuter. 

All  Genders. 

Nom. 

blinda, 

blinde, 

blinde, 

blindan, 

Gen . 

blindan, 

blindan, 

blindan, 

blindra, 

Dat. 

blindan, 

blindan, 

blindan, 

blindum, 

Ace, 

blindan. 

blindan, 

blinde. 

blindan. 

Loss  of  the  Adjective  Inflection.       245 

For  the  usual  termination  -ra  of  the  genitive  plural, 
-ena  sometimes  occurs.  This,  when  employed,  makes 
the  definite  declension  conform  entirely  to  that  of  the 
noun. 

74.  As  an  illustration  of  the  use  of  these  declensions, 
'  a  blind  man  '  would  be,  in  Anglo-Saxon,  blind  man  ; 
'  of  a  blind  man  '  would  be  blindes  marines  ;  whereas, 
making  the  substantive  definite  by  connecting  it  with 
the  demonstrative  pronoun,  'that  (or  'the')  blind 
man'  would  be  se  blinda  man;  and  'of  that  (or  'the') 
blind  man '  would  be  fias  blindan  mannes. 

75.  A  glance  at  these  paradigms  is  sufficient  to 
show  how  rich  in  inflection  the  English  adjective  was 
in  the  Anglo-Saxon  of  the  tenth  and  eleventh  cen- 
turies, even  if  then  it  had  lost  some  of  the  endings 
which  two  centuries  before  had  belonged  to  it.     Down 

to  the  twelfth  century  this  fulness  of  inflection  was  on  J 
the  whole  retained.  The  same  confusion,  however, 
that  overtook  the  noun  during  the  centuries  following 
the  Conquest  befell  the  adjective  also.  Variation  of 
inflection  was  one  of  the  first  things  to  go.  By  the  end 
of  the  second  century  after  the  Conquest  the  distinc- 
tion between  the  definite  and  the  indefinite  adjective 
had  not  only  broken  down  to  a  great  extent  every- 
where, it  had  in  some  places  disappeared  entirely. 
The  confusion  in  this  part  of  speech  that  sprang  up 
in  consequence  did  not,  however,  result  in  giving 
exclusive  ascendency  to  any  one  particular  inflection, 
as  in  the  case  of  the  noun  :  it  had  rather  the  effect  of 
causing  the  terminations  to  be  abandoned  altogether. 


246  Engl  is  Ji  Language . 

76.  Traces  of  the  two  original  declensions  con- 
tinued to  exist,  it  is  true,  till  late  in  the  fourteenth 
century,  and  possibly  till  the  middle  of  the  next. 
Monosyllabic  adjectives  ending  in  a  consonant  as- 
sumed then,  as  before,  a  final  -e  in  the  singular  when 
preceded  by  the  definite  article  or  a  demonstrative  or 
possessive  pronoun.  Thus,  '  the  blind  man  '  would  be 
generally  written  and  pronounced  the  blinde  man. 
This  was  occasionally  true  also  of  adjectives  of  more 
than  one  syllable.  But  after  that  period  all  trace  of 
distinctions  of  this  sort  speedily  disappeared,  and  dis- 
appeared completely.  A  relic  of  the  definite  declen- 
sion may  perhaps  still  be  seen  in  the  form  olden 
(A.  S.,  ealdan)  in  phrases  such  as  'the  olden  time'; 
but  if  olden  in  such  an  expression  actually  took  its 
origin  from  that  source,  it  is,  to  modern  feeling,  simply 
a  collateral  form  of  the  adjective  old,  and  not  an 
oblique  case  of  it,  as  etymologically  it  is. 

77.  The  only  further  important  survival  of  the 
original  inflection  at  the  beginning  of  the  Middle 
English  period  was  the  distinction  that  still  continued 
to  prevail  between  the  singular  and  the  plural.  Mono- 
syllabic adjectives  ending  in  a  consonant  assumed  -e 
as  the  termination  of  the  latter  number.  Thus,  for 
illustration,  blind  would  be  used  for  all  cases  of  the 
singular,  when  not  compelled  to  conform  to  the  defi- 
nite declension.  Similarly  blinde  would  be  the  common 
form  for  all  cases  of  the  plural.  Necessarily  this  dis- 
tinction could  not  apply  to  adjectives  which  ended  in 
-e,   such    as   netae,  swete,   blithe;    it    had   even    then 


Comparison  of  tlie  Adjective.  247 

ceased  to  apply  to  adjectives  of  more  than  one  sylla- 
ble. It  was,  moreover,  further  weakened  by  the  fact 
that  many  adjectives  which  originally  terminated  in  a 
consonant  had,  like  the  noun,  assumed  a  final  -e  to 
which  they  were  not  entitled  ;  and,  in  consequence, 
the  ending  of  the  singular  was  with  them  the  same  as 
that  of  the  plural.  By  the  close  of  the  Middle  English 
period  the  distinction  between  the  two  numbers  was  1/ 
utterly  swept  away,  and  the  unchanged  radical  form 
of  the  adjective  was,  as  now,  the  only  one  employed. 

78.  The  history  of  the  participle  does  not  differ 
from  that  of  the  adjective.  It  also  was  generally 
inflected  both  ways  in  Anglo-Saxon,  and  shared 
throughout  in  all  the  losses  suffered  by  the  latter. 

Comparison. 

79.  Comparison,  being  really  a  matter  of  derivation, 
and  not  of  inflection,  does  not  strictly  find  a  place  in 
a  history  of  the  latter.  It  is  convenient,  however,  to 
follow  the  usual  method,  and  so  treat  it. 

In  all  of  the  Indo-European  tongues  certain  suffixes 
were  added  to  the  radical  of  the  adjective  to  form 
the  comparative  :  to  form  the  superlative,  a  secondary 
suffix  was  added,  usually  to  the  suffix  of  the  com- 
parative. These  suffixes  underwent  much  change 
of  form  in  the  various  languages  ;  but  their  general 
resemblance  and  common  descent  are  apparent  in 
all. 

The  suffixes  almost  universally  employed  in  the 
Teutonic  to  form  the  comparative  were  is  and  os:  to 


248  English  Language. 

s. 

these  another  suffix,  ta,  was  added  to  form  the  super- 
lative. But  in  every  one  of  the  Teutonic  tongues, 
save  the  Gothic,  the  s  of  the  comparative  had  suffered 
rhotacism  (14),  as  it  did  usually  in  Latin  (cf.  alt-us, 
alt-ior,  alt-ius).  The  forms  employed  were,  in  con- 
sequence, ir  and  or.  In  the  superlative,  however,  the 
change  of  s  to  r  did  not  take  place ;  and  the  original 
forms  of  the  suffixes  were  therefore  ista  and  osta. 

80.  In  Anglo-Saxon,  moreover,  the  i  or  0  of  the 
suffix  was  dropped  in  the  comparative.  In  some 
words,  however,  vowel-modification  produced  by  the 
i  (20)  continued  to  remain,  and,  in  a  few  instances, 
transmitted  the  modified  form  to  a  later  period.  Thus 
tang,  '  long,'  strung,  '  strong,'  under  the  influence  of 
the  vowel  which  had  come  to  be  dropped,  became 
lengra  (for  lengira)  and  strengra  (for  strengira) .  In 
a  similar  manner,  geong,  'young,'  became,  in  the  com- 
parative, gingra,  and  eald,  '  old,'  became  likewise 
ieldra.  The  vowels  i  and  0  of  the  suffixes  being 
dropped,  the  simple  letter  r  was  consequently  all  that 
was  added  to  form  the  comparative  ;  and,  as  adjec- 
tives in  this  degree  were  invariably  inflected  accord- 
ing to  the  definite  declension,  the  termination  of  the 
nominative  was  therefore  always  -ra  and  -re.  In  the 
superlative,  the  final  -a  of  the  two  original  suffixes, 
ista  and  osta,  was  dropped,  and  the  i  of  the  ending 
1st  was  usually  weakened  into  e.  Still,  whenever  in- 
flected according  to  the  definite  declension,  which 
was  usually  the  case,  it  necessarily  reassumed  the  final 
■a,  wherever  that  termination  properly  belonged. 


Comparison  of  the  Adjective.  249 

81.  The  comparison  of  the  adjective  in  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  period  may,  in  consequence,  be  fully  seen  in 
the  following  examples  :  — 


blind, 

blind, 

blind-r-a, 

blind-ost. 

brad, 

broad, 

brad-r-a, 

brad-ost. 

heard, 

hard, 

heard-r-a, 

heard-ost. 

Strang, 

strong, 

streng-r-a, 

streng-est. 

eald, 

old, 

ield-r-a, 

ield-est. 

geong, 

young, 

gieng-r-a, 

gieng-est. 

82.  In  the  Early  English  period  the  comparative 
suffix  was  no  longer  added  directly  to  the  stem  as  in 
Anglo-Saxon,  but  an  e  or  an  0  was  inserted  between. 
This  may  have  been  due  to  a  transference  to  the  com- 
parative of  the  e  and  o  of  the  superlative  endings. 
Confusion,  at  any  rate,  soon  sprang  up  in  the  use  of 
these  two  vowels.  The  same  adjective  would  appear 
in  the  comparative  and  superlative  degree,  sometimes 
with  the  suffixes  -ore,  -ost,  sometimes  with  -ere,  -est. 
A  representative  comparison  of  the  adjective  during 
this  transition  period  would  be  the  following  :  — 

( blind-ere,  blind-est(e). 

blind,  \ 

t  blind-ore,  blind  ost(e). 

The  forms  with  the  connective  e  became  steadily 
predominant,  and  by  the  fourteenth  century  were 
almost  invariably  employed.  The  final  -e,  both  of  the 
comparative  and  of  the  superlative,  was  also  at  that 
time  frequently  dropped  in  spelling,  as  it  had  been 


250  English  Language. 

in  pronunciation.  By  the  beginning  of  the  Modern 
English  period  it  had  disappeared  altogether,  leaving 
the  comparison  precisely  in  the  situation  in  which  it 
is  at  present. 

83.  The  modification  of  the  vowel  seen  in  Strang, 
'strong,'  strengra,  'stronger';  /ang,  'long,'  lengra, 
'longer'  ;  geong,  '  young,'  gingra,  'younger,'  and  other 
words  lasted  down  to  the  fourteenth  century,  and 
later.  We  find  then,  in  consequence,  such  com- 
parisons as 


long, 

lenger(e), 

lengest(e). 

strong, 

strenger(e), 

strengest(e) 

yong, 

yenger(e), 

yengest(c). 

This  is  the  common  method,  at  the  beginning  of  the 
Middle  English  period,  of  comparing  long  and  strong; 
but  in  the  case  of  yong,  '  young,'  the  vowel  of  the 
positive  had  a  good  while  before  been  adopted  into 
the  comparative  and  superlative.  In  the  fifteenth 
century  this  same  procedure  took  place  in  the  com- 
parison of  the  other  two.  The  forms  with  vowel-modi- 
fication disappeared  from  the  language  entirely,  with 
the  single  exception  of  old,  which  still  clings  to  elder 
and  eldest,  the  representatives  of  the  original  com- 
parison, although  it  has  developed,  and  commonly 
uses,  the  more  strictly  regular  forms,  older  and  oldest. 
84.  In  the  Ancren  Riwle,  or 'Rule  of  Anchorites,' 
a  work  written  about  1220,  one  of  the  first,  if  not  the 
first,  recorded  instance  of  comparison  by  means  of 
adverbs  is  found  in  the  phrase  the  meste  dredful.    This 


Double  Comparison.  251 

comparison  by  means  of  the  adverbs  more  and  most 
is  rare  in  the  thirteenth  century ;  but  in  the  fourteenth 
it  made  rapid  progress.  Since  that  time  it  has  steadily 
increased  in  use,  nourishing  side  by  side  with  the 
suffixes  in  -er  and  -est.  In  the  case  of  polysyllabic 
adjectives  this  method  of  comparison  is  now  much 
the  more  common  one,  few  late  English  writers  em- 
ploying forms  like  Bacon's  honorablest,  Shakspeare's 
sovereignest,  or  Milton's  virtuousest,  exquisitest,  exeel- 
lentest.  But  the  tendency  to  give  up  the  employment 
of  such  formations  is  not  due  to  their  being  improper, 
but  to  their  being  difficult  to  pronounce. 

85.  The  existence  of  two  methods  of  comparison 
enabled  English  to  gratify  that  disposition  to  make 
use  of  double  comparison  to  which  all  the  Teutonic 
tongues  have  manifested  an  inclination.  This  was 
introduced  in  the  fourteenth  century,  and  for  the  next 
three  centuries  was  largely  employed.  In  the  latter 
part  of  the  sixteenth  century,  and  the  beginning  of 
the  seventeenth,  when  it  was  by  many  regarded  as  an 
elegancy  of  style,  it  was  perhaps  the  most  prevalent. 
Expressions  like  '  the  most  unkindest  cut  of  all ' 
("Julius  Caesar,"  act  iii.  scene  2),  'the  most  straitest 
sect  of  our  religion'  (Acts  xxvi.  5),  'my  most  dearest 
nephew'  (Sir  Thomas  More's  "Edward  V."),  are  to 
be  found  scattered  through  the  pages  of  numerous 
writers  of  the  Elizabethan  age,  and  earlier.  By  Ben 
Jonson  this  is  spoken  of  as  "  a  certain  kind  of  English 
Atticism,  or  eloquent  phrase  of  speech,  imitating  the 
manner  of  the  most  ancientest  and  finest  Grecians, 


252  English  Language. 

who,  for  more  emphasis  and  vehemency's  sake,  used 
so  to  speak."  This  usage  died  out  in  the  seventeenth 
century,  but  has  been  occasionally  employed  by  Eng- 
lish poets  of  the  present  time.1 

86.  Furthermore,  the  assertion,  so  frequently  made, 
that  adjectives  expressing  the  highest  possible  degree 
of  a  quality,  like  chief,  supreme,  perfect,  are  not 
subject  to  comparison,  whether  logically  correct  or 
not,  is  not  merely  utterly  at  variance  with  the  usage 
of  the  best  writers  of  all  periods  of  English,  but  with 
that  of  the  best  writers  of  both  ancient  and  modern 
cultivated  tongues.  For  instance,  more  perfect  and 
most  perfect  have  been  employed  by  the  greatest 
authors  of  our  language  with  as  much  freedom  as  per- 
fectior  and  perfectissimus  were  by  Cicero.  A  similar 
statement  can  be  made  as  to  the  use  of  the  superlatives 
when  two  persons  or  things  only  are  compared.  The 
impropriety  of  this  usage  is  strongly  insisted  upon  by 
many  grammarians  ;  yet  it  is  one  which  will  be  met 
with  constantly  in  the  best  writers  of  our  speech. 

87.  Like  all  the  Teutonic  tongues,  English  possessed 
certain  adjectives,  the  comparison  of  which  is  irregu- 
lar. The  irregularity  consists  in  the  fact  that  the 
comparative  and  superlative  are  derived  from  a  stem 
different  from  that  of  the  positive.  In  Anglo-Saxon 
the  following  were  the  forms  in  common  use  :  — 

1  E.g., 

Rise  up,  shine,  stretch  thine  hand  out,  with  thy  bow 
Touch  the  most  dimmest  heights  of  trembling  heaven. 

SWINBURNE,  Atalanta  in  Cafydon,  line  20. 


Irregular  Comparison  of  the  Adjective.     253 


god 

good, 

betera, 

betest. 

yfel, 

evil, 

wiersa, 

t  wierrest, 
I  wierst. 

micel, 

muck, 

mara, 

miest. 

lytel, 

little, 

lSssa, 

<  liesest, 
1  laest. 

These  forms  have  continued  with  little  change  down 
to  our  time,  though  ill  and  bad  have  come  into  use 
as  additional  positives  of  worse.  In  this  last  word 
and  in  less,  as  will  be  observed,  the  change  of  s  to  r 
in  the  comparative  (79)  did  not  take  place. 

88.  There  has  at  times  been  prevalent  a  disposition 
to  compare  some  of  these  words  regularly,  but  it  has 
never  been  sufficiently  powerful  to  cause  any  general 
adoption  of  such  new  forms.  Gooder  and  goodest, 
badder  and  baddest,  are,  however,  to  be  met  with 
occasionally  in  our  literature,  though  they  cannot  be 
called  common  ;  and  littler  and  littlest  are  forms  fre- 
quently found  in  the  English  dialects,  and  sometimes 
make  their  appearance  in  the  literary  speech.  Further- 
more, the  double  comparative  lesser  has  thoroughly 
established  itself  in  good  usage,  though  it  does  not 
seem  to  have  come  into  the  language  till  the  sixteenth 
century.  Worse/;  another  double  comparative,  very 
common  in  the  Elizabethan  period,  is  now  but  rarely 
employed :  still,  the  frequency  of  its  occurrence  in 
certain  great  writers,  especially  Shakspeare,  will  prob- 
ably prevent  its  ever  dying  out  completely. 

89.  A  few  adjectives  still  preserved,  at  the  begin- 


254  English  Language. 

ning  of  the  Middle  English  period,  the  practice  of 
adding  the  suffixes  of  comparison  without  any  con- 
nective, as  in  Anglo-Saxon.  Thus  we  have  the  form 
derre,  '  dearer.'  The  comparative  and  superlative  of 
the  adjective  now  spelled  high  was  then  frequently 
herre  and  hext.  There  are,  moreover,  other  cases  in 
which  a  positive  was  originally  lacking.  Such  are 
nerre,  '  nearer,'  and  next,  '  nearest.'  These  were 
formed  in  Anglo-Saxon  from  the  adverb  neah,  as  was 
further  (A.  S.  fur&ra),  from  the  adverb  fore,  '  be- 
fore.' In  this  case  -titer,  another  suffix  of  comparison 
unusual  in  Anglo-Saxon,  was  added  to  the  stem. 
Later,  these  forms  further  and  furthest  seem  to  have 
supplanted  the  ferre  and  ferrest  derived  from  the 
adverb  feor,  '  far,'  and  were  assumed  to  belong  to  that 
word  as  their  positive.  As  a  natural  result  came  still 
later  the  additional  form  farther  and  farthest,  in  which 
the  vowel  of  the  assumed  positive  has  made  its  way 
into  the  comparative  and  superlative.  No  distinction 
in  good  usage  exists  as  yet  between  the  forms  farther 
and  further,  though  one  may  be  developed  in  time. 

90.  There  is  still  another  suffix  of  comparison  in 
Anglo-Saxon  which  has  left  some  trace  of  itself  in 
Modern  English.  This  is  the  superlative  suffix  -ma, 
which  is  found  frequently  in  Latin  in  the  form  -mo, 
as,  for  example,  mini  mo.  In  Anglo-Saxon  it  is  seen 
in  for- ma,  'foremost,'  'first,'  and  hinde-ma,  'hind- 
most.' But  even  then  the  superlative  force  of  the 
suffix  -ma  began  to  be  felt  as  weak,  and  the  regular 
suffix  -est   was   added,   thereby   forming    the    double 


Irregular  Comparison  of  tJic  Adjective.     255 

superlative  suffix  -mest,  seen  in  fyrmest.  This  double 
superlative  suffix  was  found  in  a  number  of  words  in 
Anglo-Saxon,  which  came  usually  from  adverbs  and 
prepositions,  such,  for  example,  as  innemest,  '  in- 
most' ;  mid  mest,  'midmost';  and  nordmest,  'north- 
most.'  It  still  occurs  in  several  words  in  Modern 
English,  but  it  has  now  assumed  universally  the  form 
-most,  the  0  having  been  substituted  for  e  as  a  conse- 
quence of  -mest  being  confounded  with  the  adverb 
most,  used  similarly  to  express  the  superlative. 


CHAPTER   IV. 

THE   PRONOUN. 

91.  The  pronoun  is  strictly  divided  into  four  classes, 
—  the  personal,  the  demonstrative,  the  interrogative, 
and  the  relative.  To  these  is  added  usually  a  fifth 
class,  called  the  indefinite,  which  comprehends  a  num- 
ber of  words  that  occupy  a  position  half  way  between 
the  noun  and  adjective,  and  sometimes  partake  of  the 
nature  of  both.  Names  of  other  classes  are  also  met 
with  frequently.  The  most  common  of  these  are  the 
so-called  possessive  pronouns,  which  are  in  reality 
nothing  but  adjectives  ;  the  reflexive  pronouns,  which 
consist  simply  of  the  personal  pronouns  strengthened 
by  the  word  self;  and  the  reciprocal  pronouns,  which 
are  formed  by  the  combination  of  two  of  the  in- 
definite pronouns.  It  is  only  the  first  five  classes, 
however,  that  can  be  said  to  have  an  independent 
existence. 

92.  As  the  indefinite  pronouns  were  inflected  either 
like  the  noun  or  the  adjective,  their  later  history  is 
involved  in  that  of  those  two  parts  of  speech,  and 
does  not  demand  attention  here.     It  is  different  with 

256 


The  Demonstrative  Pronouns.  257 

the  words  belonging  to  the  four  other  classes.  These 
have  a  history  of  a  somewhat  exceptional  character. 
Ordinarily  the  discussion  of  the  pronoun  begins  with 
the  personal ;  but  as,  in  the  later  development  of  the 
English  language,  some  of  the  forms  of  the  demonstra- 
tive have  gone  over  to  the  personal,  it  is  expedient  in 
this  case  to  begin  with  the  former. 

The  Demonstrative  Pronouns. 

93.  The  only  two  genuine  demonstratives  in  Mod- 
ern English  are  that  and  this  with  their  respective 
plurals.  But  in  the  earliest  period  of  the  language 
they  had  a  fulness  of  inflection  of  which  there  has 
been  but  little  survival  in  the  present  tongue.  Each 
of  them  will  require  separate  consideration. 

94.  The  following  is  the  inflection  in  Anglo-Saxon 
of  the  demonstrative  represented  in  Modern  English 
by  that :  — 


SINGULAR. 

PLURAL. 

Masc. 

Fern. 

Neut. 

All  Genders 

Nom. 

se,   ' 

seo, 

Het, 

pa, 

Gen. 

paes, 

Here, 

paes, 

para, 

Dai. 

Hem, 

Here, 

)>cem, 

Hem, 

Ace. 

hone, 

pa, 

Het, 

pa. 

Inst. 

py.  r 

Besides   the    forms   just   given,    there   are    numerous 

varying  ones  which  it  is  not  necessary  to  specify  here. 

95.    From    the  beginning   the    form  f>e  had    been 

found  in  the  dialect  of  the  North  alongside  of  se.     It 


258  English  Language. 

also  appeared  in  late  West-Saxon  ;  and  early  in  Old 
English  the  form  for  the  nominative  became  pe,  peo, 
pat.  The  inflection  at  that  time,  however,  began  to 
fall  into  confusion.  There  came  to  be,  as  was  gener- 
ally the  case  with  all  parts  of  speech,  the  widest  dif- 
ference of  usage  between  various  portions  of  the 
country.  It  resulted  in  the  gradual  confounding  and 
consequent  abandonment  of  the  inflectional  forms  of 
the  pronoun  se.  This  went  on  increasing,  so  that  at 
the  beginning  of  the  Middle  English  period  nothing 
was  left  of  the  singular  number  but  that,  originally  the 
neuter  nominative  and  accusative.  The  plural  was 
represented  by  tho,  the  Anglo-Saxon  /hi.  All  the 
other  forms  had  either  disappeared  or  had  been  put 
to  other  uses.  Nor  was  tho  itself  the  only  plural. 
The  form  thos,  or  those,  probably  from  the  plural  pas 
of  the  demonstrative  pronoun  pes  (99),  had  taken  a 
place  alongside  of  it  in  the  same  sense.  At  first  it 
was  used  interchangeably  with  it,  but  finally  supplanted 
it  entirely  as  the  regular  plural  of  that.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  Early  English  representatives  of  the  original 
plural  of  this  pronoun  did  not  die  out.  Modified  as 
to  their  spelling  by  the  corresponding  forms  of  the 
similar  pronoun  of  the  Old  Norse,  they  went  over  to 
the  pronoun  of  the  third  person,  and  were  finally 
adopted  as  its  plural  (108). 

96.  The  instrumental  py,  which  in  the  North  had 
also  the  form  pe,  continued,  however,  to  remain  in  use 
with  the  comparative  of  the  adjective.  With  this  it 
is  still  constantly  employed  in  Modern   English,  as  it 


The  Demonstrative  Pronouns.  259 

in  fact  has  been  during  every  period  in  the  history 
of  the  tongue.  In  such  phrases  as  "  the  more,  the 
better,"  the  is  often  falsely  explained  as  an  article ; 
whereas  it,  in  fact,  is  nothing  more  than  a  relic  of  the 
lost  instrumental  case  of  the  demonstrative  pronoun. 

97.  It  is  evident  that  the  definite  article  owes  its 
origin  to  the  demonstrative  just  inflected.  As  such,  in 
fact,  this  pronoun  was  generally  employed  during  the 
Anglo-Saxon  period,  though  many  cases  occur  when 
it  is  hard  to  decide  whether  the  word  is  really  used  as 
the  article  or  as  the  demonstrative.  In  the  twelfth 
century  the  form  se  had  generally  given  way  to  the 
collateral  form  foe,  which,  as  time  went  on,  came  more 
and  more  to  take  the  place  of  all  the  other  inflectional 
forms.  This  had  become  the  established  rule  in  the 
fourteenth  century,  in  which  the,  strictly  a  nominative 
singular  masculine,  was  employed  with  all  nouns  with- 
out respect  to  their  gender,  number,  or  case.  Before 
that  time,  forms  derived  from  other  cases  of  the  de- 
monstrative are  occasionally  to  be  found,  especially  in 
the  Southern  dialect.  This  is  particularly  true  of  foe  11 
or  then,  from  the  accusative  foone,  an  example  of  which 
can  be  seen  in  the  following  line  :  — 

Then  vvey  he  nom  to  Londone,  he  and  alle  his.1 

98.  But  besides  the  forms  which  have  died  out  of 
the  language  entirely,  that  was  employed  to  some  ex- 
tent also  as  a  definite  article.     Though  itself  strictly  a 

1  He  took  the  way  to  London,  he  and  all  his. —  Robert  of  Glou- 
cester, vol.  i.,  page  364. 


260  English  Language. 

neuter  nominative  or  accusative,  it  was  applied  to  any 
noun  in  the  singular  number,  no  matter  what  its  gen- 
der or  case.  This  state  of  things  did  not  continue. 
The  employment  of  that  as  a  demonstrative,  as  a  rel- 
ative, and  also  as  a  conjunction,  had  insensibly  the 
tendency  to  cause  the  to  be  regarded  as  exclusively 
the  article,  not  only  for  the  sake  of  greater  definite- 
ness,  but  to  relieve  the  other  word  from  being  too 
much  over-worked.  So,  during  the  Middle  English 
period,  that  gave  way  entirely  to  the.  Certain  expres- 
sions in  which  it  had  once  been  used  as  an  article  con- 
tinued, however,  to  survive  long  after  any  such  general 
employment  of  it  had  been  abandoned.  This  is  true 
especially  of  the  phrases  that  oon,  and  that  other,  mean- 
ing -the  one,'  and  '  the  other.'  In  these  the  a  of  that 
having  been  weakened  to  e,  the  final  t  of  the  resulting 
thet  was  often  transferred  to  the  following  word,  giving 
us  the  tone,  and  the  tother,  sometimes  that  tother,  — 
expressions  which  are  not  uncommon  in  Elizabethan 
English,  and,  indeed,  are  occasionally  met  with  now. 
In  fact,  the  word  tother  has  often  been  used  alone. 
When  now  so  used,  it  is  generally  written  with  an 
apostrophe,  father,  as  if  the  /  were  a  contraction 
of  the,  instead  of  being  in  its  origin  the  final  letter  of 
thet. 

99.  The  following  is  the  paradigm  of  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  demonstrative  pronoun  whose  representative  in 
Modern  English  is  this:  — 


The  Demonstrative  Pronouns. 


261 


SINGULAR. 

PLURAL. 

Masc. 

Fem. 

Neut. 

All  Genders, 

Nom. 

pes, 

peos, 

pis, 

has, 

Gen. 

pises, 

Hsse, 

pises, 

pissa, 

Dot. 

pisum, 

pisse, 

pisum, 

pisum, 

Ace. 

Hsne, 

has, 

pis, 

pas. 

Inst. 

hys. 

As  in  the  case  of  se,  there  are  numerous  variant  forms 
not  recorded  here. 

100.  Even  less  of  this  pronoun  has  survived  than  of 
the  pronoun  se.  It  is  the  neuter  nominative  and  ac- 
cusative that  has  alone  remained  of  the  singular ;  and 
the  dropping  of  the  other  forms  not  only  took  place 
early,  but  had  been  completed  by  the  close  of  the 
thirteenth  century,  though  sporadic  examples  of  some 
of  them  occur  later.  In  the  fourteenth  century,  only 
the  form  this  is  found  in  the  singular.  The  original 
plural  foas  had  become  confounded  with  the  plural  of 
se,  and  gradually  ceased  to  be  regarded  as  belonging 
to  this  demonstrative  (95 ).  Its  place  as  plural  was  taken 
by  the  surviving  singular  form  this,  to  which  -e,  the 
plural  ending  of  the  adjective,  was  sometimes  added, 
giving  the  form  thise.  A  collateral  form  was  these,  which 
gradually  supplanted  the  two  others,  and  became,  in 
the  Middle  English  period,  the  regular  plural,  which  it 
has  ever  since  remained.  The  form  this,  however, 
continued  to  survive,  and,  as  a  genuine  plural,  is  far 
from  uncommon  in  the  sixteenth  century.  Especially 
is  this  true  of  certain  expressions  such  as  "  this  twenty 


262  English  Language. 

weeks,"  "  this  hundred  pounds,"  which  are  still  more 
or  less  in  use,  and  are  now  ordinarily  explained  on 
syntactical  grounds,  which  do  not  require  this  to  be 
regarded  as  a  plural.  Such  it  certainly  was  not  in  the 
original  form  of  the  phrases.1 

101.  Besides  this,  there  were  in  Anglo-Saxon  cer- 
tain other  words  which  are  frequently  reckoned  as 
demonstrative  pronouns.  They  are  compounds  of  lie, 
'  like.'  One  of  them  is  He,  '  same,'  which  lasted  down 
to  the  fifteenth  century  in  the  literary  language  as  ill:, 
and  then  passed  out  of  common  use  ;  but  it  was  pre- 
served in  the  speech  of  the  North,  and  is  made  some- 
what familiar  to  us  by  its  frequent  occurrence  in  the 
poetry  written  in  the  Scotch  dialect.  Another  of  these 
demonstratives  was  />ylc,  '  that  same,'  '  that,'  which  in 
Early  English  usually  appeared  as  thilke,  but  died  out 
before  the  beginning  of  Modern  English.  Another 
compound  was  swile,  which,  after  passing  through  many 
intermediate  forms  of  spelling,  varying  with  pronuncia- 
tion, —  among  which  are  swile  lie,  swulche,  sitlehe, 
szviclie,  siehe,  and  soehe,  —  finally  had  one  of  them, 
such,  adopted  into  the  language  of  literature  as  the 
established  form.  The  vulgar  speech  still  preserves 
the  spelling  and  pronunciation  sieli,  corresponding 
strictly  to  the  correlative  which    (136). 

102.  Of  these  four,  He  followed  the  definite  declen- 
sion of  the  adjective  in  Anglo  Saxon  ;  the  other  two, 
the  indefinite  ;   and  they  all    naturally  shared   in   the 

1  Compare,  e.g.,  pis  feowertig  daga  (  Blickling  Homilies,  page  35), 
in  which  daga  is  the  genitive  plural. 


The  Personal  Pronouns. 


263 


fate  that  overtook  those  inflections.  Besides  these, 
there  was  originally  in  the  language  a  third  genuine 
demonstrative,  geon,  corresponding  to  the  German 
jener.  But  even  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  period  it  was  be- 
coming obsolete,  only  one  instance  of  its  use  having 
been  so  far  recorded.  In  the  form  yon,  however,  it 
was  preserved  in  the  Northern  dialect,  and  has  ex- 
tended from  that  to  the  language  of  literature  ;  but 
it  is  rarely  used  outside  of  poetry. 

The  Personal  Pronouns. 

103.  The  following  are  the  forms  of  the  pronouns 
of  the  first,  second,  and  third  persons,  as  found  in 
Anglo-Saxon.  The  third  person  is  the  only  one  that 
distinguishes  gender,  and  that  in  the  singular  alone. 


FIRST 

PERSON. 

Singular. 

Dual. 

Plural. 

Norn. 

ic, 

Wit, 

we, 

Gen. 

mill, 

uncer, 

user,  ure, 

Dat. 

me, 

unc, 

us, 

Ace. 

t  mec, 
I  me. 

SECONE 

uncit, 
unc. 

1  PERSON. 

usic, 
us. 

Singular. 

Dual. 

Plural. 

Nom. 

K 

git, 

ge, 

Gen. 

Inn, 

incer, 

eower, 

Dat. 

\>e, 

inc, 

eow, 

Ace. 

t  J'ec, 
tj>e. 

incit, 
inc. 

eowic, 
eow. 

264  English  Language. 

THIRD    PERSON. 

SINGULAR.  PLURAL. 

Masculine.  Feminine.  Neuter.  All  Genders. 

Nom.       he,                  heo,  hit,                 hi, 

Gen.         his,                  hire,  his,                  hira, 

Dat.          him,                hire,  him,                him, 

Ace.  hine.  <  }  hit.  hi. 

I  heo.  i 

Here,  as  in  the  case  of  the  other  pronouns,  numer- 
ous variant  forms  are  not  recorded. 

104.  Comparing  these  forms  with  those  found  in 
Modern  English,  it  is  evident  at  once  that  the  personal 
pronouns  have  retained  more  of  the  original  inflec- 
tion than  either  the  noun  or  the  adjective.  It  is  they 
and  the  interrogative  who  that  alone  continue  to  make 
a  distinction  in  form  between  the  nominative  and 
objective  cases.  Moreover,  whatever  losses  they  suf- 
fered, they  suffered  them  before  the  Middle  English 
period  ;  and  certain  general  statements  can  be  made 
in  regard  to  their  forms  as  seen  in  Anglo-Saxon,  con- 
trasted with  those  exhibited  by  them  even  in  Middle 
English. 

105.  The  most  noticeable  thing  is  the  fact  that,  in 
this,  the  earliest  form  of  the  language,  the  pronouns 
of  the  first  and  second  persons  still  continued  to  re- 
tain the  dual  number.  It  had  died  out  of  the  noun, 
the  adjective,  and  the  verb  ;  but  in  Anglo-Saxon,  as 
in  the  other  early  Teutonic  tongues,  it  still  survived  in 
these  two  pronouns.     But  in  it,  as  likewise  in  the  others, 


The  Personal  Pronouns.  265 

it  showed  signs  of  giving  way.  Even  in  the  ninth  and 
tenth  centuries  it  was  not  unusual  to  strengthen  the 
dual  forms  by  one  of  the  words  meaning  '  both '  or 
'  two.'  The  nominative  dual  wit,  meaning  '  we  two,' 
received  not  unfrequently  the  word  begen  or  bu, '  both,' 
as  in  the  following  line  :  — 

Ne  forlaete  ic  ]  e,  J'enden  wit  lifia'8  bu} 

Oedmon,  Genesis,  line  2256. 

Instances  also  occur  in  which  bu,  '  both,'  and  twa 
or  tic,  '  two,'  are  together  added  to  the  form  of  the 
dual.  As  the  number  was  by  no  means  essential  to 
expression,  its  fate  was  sealed  as  soon  as  the  force 
originally  beLmging  to  it  was  felt  to  be  going.  It  sur- 
vived the  Norman  Conquest  some  two  hundred  years ; 
but  it  was  never  in  any  sense  common.  In  the  thir- 
teenth century  it  disappeared  entirely. 

106.  The  second  fact  to  be  noticed  is,  that  the 
feminine  nominative  singular  of  the  third  person,  and 
all  the  forms  of  the  plural,  have  been  entirely  sup- 
planted by  the  corresponding  forms  of  the  demon- 
strative pronoun  se,  seo,  ficet  (94).  This  transition 
began  to  take  place  during  the  Old  English  period, 
but  was  not  fully  completed  till  the  fifteenth  century. 
It  doubtless  owed  its  origin  to  the  desire  of  distin- 
guishing between  the  forms  of  the  pronoun,  which  had 
frequently  come  to  be  the  same  for  different  genders, 
cases,  and  numbers.  The  form  he,  for  example, 
sometimes   represents   in   Early  English    the   modern 

1  I  shall  not  desert  thee  while  we  two  both  live. 


266  English  Language. 

masculine  he,  the  feminine  she,  and  the  plural  they; 
and  likewise  him  or  hem  stands  for  the  modern  mas- 
culine him,  the  neuter  it,  and  the  plural  them. 

107.  The  resort  to  the  demonstrative  was  not  un- 
natural. In  the  case  of  the  feminine  pronouns  it 
began  to  manifest  itself  in  the  twelfth  century.  A 
number  of  forms  based  upon  sea,  'that  one'  (94)  early 
took  their  places  alongside  of  heo,  though  it  is  not 
impassible  that  they  were  influenced  to  some  extent 
by  the  latter.  Among  them  were  scheo,  scJia,  sco,  sc/ie, 
and  she,  the  last  of  which  prevailed  over  all  others, 
and  in  the  fifteenth  century  became  the  standard  form. 
As  usual,  in  all  these  movements  the  Northern  dialect 
led  the  way  ;  but  in  every  case  the  triumph  of  the 
newer  forms  was  a  very  slow  one. 

108.  This  is  especially  true  of  the  substitution  of 
the  plural  forms  of  the  demonstrative,  />a,  para,  and 
/'am  for  the  original  plural  of  the  third  person.  As 
a  result,  two  sets  of  forms  for  this  number  existed  side 
by  side  for  a  long  period,  hi,  here,  and  hem  in  the 
South,  thei,  /heir,  and  them  in  the  North.  In  the  lit- 
erary language  of  the  Midland  during  the  fourteenth 
century  there  was  a  temporary  compromise  between 
these  rival  inflections.  Thei  or  they  appears  in  the 
nominative  plural,  here  and  hem  in  the  oblique  cases. 
This  is  the  regular  declension  in  Chaucer.  In  the 
fifteenth  century,  however,  here  and  hem  were  univer- 
sally displaced  in  the  literary  speech  by  their  a.nd  them. 
It  is  to  be  added  that  the  forms  which  these  words  as- 
sumed in  English  were  largely  influenced  by  the  cor- 


The  Personal  Pronouns.  267 

responding  Old  Norse  forms,  foeir,  heirra,  f>eim,  that 
tongue  having  profoundly  affected  the  Northern  dialect 
in  which  this  new  plural  first  appeared.  Furthermore, 
the  old  objective  hem  has  left  a  relic  of  itself  in 
modern  speech  in  the  contraction  'em,  which,  in  books 
printed  in  the  first  part  of  the  seventeenth  century, 
often  appears  as  'hem,  as  if  it  had  been  contracted 
from  tJiem,  and  were  not  itself  the  original  form. 

109.  The  third  point  to  be  marked  is  that-  the 
original  Anglo-Saxon  accusative  has  disappeared,  and 
the  modern  objective  case  is  derived,  not  from  it,  but 
from  the  dative  ;  that  is  to  say,  me  comes  from  the 
dative  vie,  and  not  the  accusative  mec;  him,  from  him, 
and  not  from  June ;  her,  from  hire,  and  not  from  /// 
or  Keo.  The  only  exception  to  this  rule  is  to  be  found 
in  the  neuter  pronoun  of  the  third  person.  In  this 
the  modern  form  it  has  been  derived  from  the  accusa- 
tive, and  not  the  dative.  Yet  how  universal  was  the 
preference  for  the  latter  case  is  made  cle?r  by  the 
fact  that,  when  the  plural  of  the  demonstrative  se  was 
introduced  into  the  pronoun  of  the  third  person,  it 
was  the  dative  /nem,  '  them,'  and  not  the  accusative 
ha,  that  was  adopted  for  the  objective. 

no.    This   disuse   of  the   accusative   began  early.  1/ 

Even  in  Anglo-Saxon  the  strengthened  forms  mec,  hec, 
usie,  and  lowic,  were  largely  discarded  for  me,  fie,  us, 
and  eorv,  which  were  the  same  as  the  dative  ;  and  the 
former  died  out  immediately  after  the  Conquest,  if, 
indeed,  they  can  be  said  to  be  existing  at  the  time  of 
it.     The  accusatives  of  the  third  person  lasted  longer  ;     " 


268  English  Language. 

but  by  the  end  of  the  twelfth  century  they  were  some- 
times supplanted  by  the  dative,  and,  by  the  end  of 
the  thirteenth,  they  had  almost  universally  been  aban- 
doned. In  the  neuter  pronoun  the  dative  form  him 
and  the  accusative  hit  or  it  were  both  for  a  long  period 
in  use  :  indeed,  instances  of  the  former  occur  late  in 
the  sixteenth  century.  But  much  before  that  time, 
under  the  increasing  tendency  to  regard  him  as  belong- 
ing exclusively  to  the  masculine,  the  use  of  it  for  the 
neuter  became  general ;  and  for  the  sake  of  distinc- 
tion, this  accusative  was  adopted  in  Modern  English 
as  the  form  for  the  new  objective  case. 

in.  Besides  these  general  statements,  certain 
special  changes  are  to  be  noted  in  the  form  of  the 
pronouns.  In  the  first  person  ic  passed  in  Southern 
English  into  the  form  ich;  in  Northern  English  into 
the  form  ik.  From  both  of  these  words  the  final  con- 
sonant or  consonants  occasionally  fell  away,  leaving 
nothing  but  the  vowel.  This  did  not  take  place  often 
in  very  Early  English,  but  it  occurred  in  both  dialects, 
though  perhaps  more  commonly  in  that  of  the  North. 
Still  in  all  regions  of  the  country,  the  full  and  the 
shortened  forms  were  used  interchangeably,  ich  and  / 
or  ik  and  /,  being  found  in  the  same  work  and  some- 
times in  the  same  sentence.  The  practice  increased 
of  using  the  simple  vowel  alone,  especially  in  the 
country  north  of  the  Thames.  In  the  fourteenth  cen- 
tury it  had  become  almost  universally  adopted  in 
the  language  of  literature.  For  a  long  while  it  was 
lerally  written  with  a  small  letter,  as  it  is  now  by 


The  Personal  Pronouns.  269 

the  uneducated ;  but  before  the  beginning  of  the 
Modern  English  period,  it  was  regularly  designated  by 
a  capital. 

112.  In  the  first  part  of  the  Early  English  period 
the  genitives  of  the  first  and  second  personal  pronouns 
often  dropped  their  final  -//,  and  accordingly  exhibited 
the  double  forms  min  and  mi,  thin  and  thi.  The 
neuter  hit  came  at  the  same  time  under  the  influence 
of  a  tendency  which  has  been  very  powerful  in  all 
periods  of  the  language,  and  dropped  its  initial  h. 
Still  both  it  and  hit  flourished  side  by  side  for  several 
hundred  years  ;  and  while,  after  the  fourteenth  cen- 
tury, the  former  became  more  common,  the  latter 
did  not  die  out  entirely  till  the  sixteenth.  A  form 
ha  or  a,  used  for  several  pronouns,  and  among 
them  he,  made  its  appearance  at  the  beginning  of 
the  Early  English  period.  Though  still  found  in  the 
provincial  dialects,  it  is  only  of  importance  here 
from  the  fact  that  it  is  constantly  employed  by  the 
Elizabethan  dramatists,  and  put  into  the  mouths  of 
the  highest  as  well  as  the  lowest  characters.  A  relic 
of  it  is  preserved  in  the  interjection  quotha,  that  is, 
'  quoth  he.' 

113.  At  the  beginning  of  the  Middle  English  period 
the  following  paradigms  of  the  personal  pronouns 
exemplify  the  usage  of  Chaucer,  its  representative 
author.  In  all  cases  where  varying  forms  in  equally 
common  use  exist,  —  and  there  are  numbers  of  such, 
—  those  most  closely  resembling  Modern  English  have 
been  selected. 


270  E/iglis/i  Language. 

FIRST  PERSON.  SECOND   PERSON. 

Singular.  Plural.  Singular.  Plural. 

Nom.         I,  we,  thou,  ye, 

f  min,  1  |  thin,  1 

(jt-ii.       <  V        oure,  <  y  youre, 

I  mi,    >  Ithi,    > 

Objec.         me.  us.  thee.  you. 

THIRD  PERSON. 


SINGULAR. 

PLURAL. 

Masculine. 

Feminine. 

Neuter. 

All  Genders. 

Nom.     he, 

she, 

Ci 

they, 

Gen.      his, 

hire, 

his, 

here, 

Objec.     him. 

hire. 

0 

hem. 

114.  That  the  Middle  English  personal  pronoun  is 
about  the  same  as  the  Modern  English,  save  in  certain 
forms  of  the  third  person,  is  evident  at  a  glance. 
Their  and  them  took  the  place  of  here  and  hem  in  the 
fifteenth  century,  as  has  been  stated.  Up  to  the  seven- 
teenth century,  however,  his  remained  as  the  genitive 
of  both  the  neuter  and  the  masculine,  just  as  the  dative 
for  both  had  at  one  time  been  him.  But  by  the  end 
of  the  fifteenth  century  the  //  had  been  generally  dis- 
carded from  hit.  In  consequence,  his  did  not  seem 
so  properly  the  genitive  of  it  as  it  did  of  he.  As  the 
disposition  grew  in  strength  to  regard  his  as  belonging 
lusively  to  the  latter,  various  methods  were  resorted 


The  Personal  Pronouns.  271 

to  in  order  to  avoid  employing  it  as  a  neuter.  One 
of  the  first  of  these  was  to  use  it,  without  any  in- 
flection, as  a  genitive  ;  and  this  occurs  certainly  as 
early  as  the  fourteenth  century,  and  was  common  during 
the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth.  The  creation  and  gradual 
adoption  of  the  form  its  has  already  been  told,  and 
need  not  be  here  repeated.1  Before  the  Restoration 
of  the  Stuarts,  in  1660,  it  had  become  firmly  estab- 
lished in  the  language  ;  and,  by  the  end  of  the  seven- 
teenth century,  most  men,  doubtless,  supposed  it  had 
always  been  in  existence.  Milton  is  the  principal 
writer  of  .the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  century  who 
exhibits  any  reluctance  in  using  it.  As  is  well  known, 
it  is  found  but  three  times  in  his  poetry,  and  then  only 
where  it  is  almost  essential  to  clearness.  It,  however, 
was  sometimes  used  by  him  in  his  prose.2 

115.  One  thing  to  be  especially  marked  in  the  para- 
digms given  of  the  Middle  English  personal  pronouns 
is,  that  there  is  no  confusion  between  the  nominative 
and  objective.  In  Chaucer's  writings  ye  and  you, 
for  example,  are  never  confounded.  The  former  is 
invariably  the  case  of  the  subject ;  the  latter,  the  case 
of  the  object.  Occasional  instances  of  confusion 
between  the  two  cases  have  been  discovered  in 
writings  of  the  fourteenth  century ;  but  they  are  so 
few  in  number,  that  it  is  more  reasonable  to  attribute 
the  great  majority  of  them  to  blunders  by  the  copyists 
rather  than  to  intention  on  the  part  of  the  author. 
Undoubtedly    the    resemblance    in    writing,    already 

1  Pages  165-167.  2  E.g.,  Areopagitica,  Arbei's  reprint,  page  71. 


272  English  Language. 

pointed  out,1  between  the  letters  y  and  the  Rune  /> 
contributed  largely  to  the  confusion  of  the  two  forms, 
so  that  f>ou  was  frequently  indistinguishable  from  you; 
at  any  rate,  it  was  not  distinguished  from  it.  As  a 
result,  you  was  supposed  to  be  meant  when  thou  was 
intended.  As  is  inevitable  in  such  cases,  what  was 
originally  a  blunder  came  soon  to  be  accepted  as  an  au- 
thorized form.  Besides  this,  there  were  other  agencies 
at  work  to  break  down  the  distinction  between  the 
nominative  ye  and  the  objective  you.  In  the  fifteenth 
century  this  result  had  come  to  pass  to  a  considerable 
extent.  Still  it  was  not  till  after  the  middle  of  the 
sixteenth  century  that  the  confusion  between  the  two 
forms  showed  itself  on  any  large  scale.  Nor  did  it 
then  completely.  Our  version  of  the  Bible,  for  in- 
stance, has  regularly  ye  in  the  nominative  and  you 
in  the  accusative  :  but  in  this  particular  it  is  more 
archaic  than  is  the  language  of  the  period  to  which 
it  nominally  belongs. 

116.  With  the  plural  of  the  second  person  this  con- 
fusion of  cases  has  become  permanently  established 
in  the  language.  You,  the  representative  of  the 
original  dative  and  accusative,  is  now  the  regular  form 
for  both  nominative  and  objective.  Ye  is  also  still 
used,  but  likewise  indifferently  in  the  two  cases,  and 
with  comparative  infrcquency  in  either.  After  the 
middle  of  the  sixteenth  century,  it  looked  for  a  time 
as  if  it  were  possible  that  a  similar  result  might  be 
reached   in   the  case   of  all    the    personal    pronouns. 

1  See  pages  34-35. 


The  Personal  Pronouns.  273 

The  distinction  between  nominative  and  objective 
was  showing  everywhere  symptoms  of  breaking  down. 
In  fact,  if  the  language  of  the  Elizabethan  drama 
represents  fairly  the  language  of  society,  —  and  we 
can  hardly  take  any  other  view,  —  great  license  in 
this  respect  had  begun  to  prevail.  Me,  thee,  us,  you, 
him,  her,  and  them  were  frequently  treated  as  nomi- 
natives ;  while  the  corresponding  nominative  forms 
were  treated  as  objectives.  Modernized  editions  of 
the  authors  of  that  period  do  not  in  this  respect  rep- 
resent justly  the  usage  of  the  time,  as  in  all  or  nearly 
all  of  them  changes  in  the  text  are  silently  made.  But, 
with  the  exception  of  ye  and  you,  this  confusion  of 
case  did  not  become  universally  accepted.  The 
original  distinction  gradually  reasserted  itself,  and  is 
now  perhaps  more  strongly  insisted  upon,  at  least 
by  grammarians,  than  at  any  period  since  the  six- 
teenth century.  Yet  the  popular,  and  to  some  extent, 
the  literary  speech  has  preserved  expressions  which 
still  show  this  disregard  of  strict  inflection.  One  of 
these  is  the  frequent  use  of  the  objective  case  after 
than  and  as.  But  it  is  more  particularly  noticeable 
where  the  pronoun  /  is  the  second  of  two  pronouns 
that  are  governed  by  a  preposition  or  a  verb.  One 
of  these  colloquial  phrases,  bettveen  you  and  I,  has 
been  exceedingly  common  from  the  time  of  Queen 
Elizabeth,  and  can  be  found  in  the  writings  of  many 
well-known  authors  in  our  speech. 

117.    Certain  other  phrases,  such  as,  it  is  me,  it  is 
him,  it  is  her,  are  much  oftener  heard  at  the  present 


274  English  Language. 

day  than  the  foregoing.  They  are  perhaps  more  com- 
mon than  during  the  Elizabethan  period.  The  wider 
extension  of  their  use  may  possibly  be  due  to  an  imi- 
tation, conscious  or  unconscious,  of  French  expres- 
sions like  c'est  moi ;  at  any  rate,  they  were  very 
frequent  in  the  eighteenth  century,  when  the  influence 
of  the  French  language  on  our  own  was  most  decided. 
The  expressions,  condemned  as  they  almost  invariably 
are  by  grammarians,  have  on  their  side  the  authority 
of  many  of  the  most  eminent  writers  of  our  tongue.1 

1  Out  of  scores  and  scores  of  instances  of  the  various  locutions 
mentioned  that  could  be  quoted,  I  give  here  a  few  examples,  citing 
most  of  them  from  authors  of  the  Elizabethan  period,  educated  at 
the  universities.  Accordingly,  but  one  has  been  taken  from  Shak- 
speare,  who  would  furnish  a  large  number:  — 

What  difference  is  between  the  duke  and  I? 

Webster,  White  Devil,  page  37  (Ed.  of  1861). 

Nor  earth  nor  heaver  shall  part  my  love  and  /. 

Greene,  James  IV.,  act  i.  sc.  1. 

Malvolio.   Besides,  you  waste  She  treasure  of  your  time  with  a 

foolish  knight. 
Aguecheck.  That's  me,  I  warrant  you. 

Siiakspeare,  Twelfth  Night,  act  ii.  sc.  5. 

Let  it  be  me. 

GREENE,  Bacon  and  Bungay,  page  170  (Ed.  of  1861). 

Nor  thee  nor  them,  thrice-noble  Tamburlaine, 
Shall  want  my  heart  to  be  with  gladness  pierced 
To  do  you  honor  and  security. 

MARLOWE,  Tamburlaine  I.,  act  i.  sc.  2. 

O  wretched  Abigail,  what  hast  thee  done  ? 

MARLOWE,  Jew  of  Malta,  act  ii.  sc.  4. 

Be  thee  vicegerent  of  his  royalty. 

GREENE  and   LODGE,  Looking-Glass  for  London,  page 
118  (Ed.  of  1861). 


The  Personal  Pronouns.  275 

It  is  to  be  added  that  the  expressions,  •'/  is  /,  it  is  he, 
and  the  similar  ones,  are  not  usual  before  the  fifteenth 
century,  if  they  exist  at  all  before  that  time.  The  form 
in  Anglo-Saxon  was,  Ic  eom  hit,  '  I  am  it.'  In  Old 
English  this  usually  appeared  as,  /  it  am.  Later  it  is 
found  in  Chaucer  as,  it  am  I. 

118.  It  has  already  been  remarked  that  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  genitives  niin  and  fnn  frequently  dropped  the 
-n  in  the  Old  English  period.  Precisely  corresponding 
in  form  to  these  genitives  were  the  adjective  pronouns 
nun  and  pin,  which  had  originally  a  full  set  of  inflec- 
tions, according  to  the  indefinite  declension.     These 

For  Amurnth's  stout  stomach  shall  undo 
Both  he  himself  and  all  his  other  crew. 

Greene,  Alphousus,  act  v.  page  245  (Ed.  of  1861). 

What  would  you  with  the  king  ?     Is  it  him  you  seek  ? 

Marlowe,  Edward  II.,  act  ii.  sc.  5. 

Tis  not  thy  wealth,  but  her  that  I  esteem. 

MARLOWE,  Jetv  of  Malta,  act  ii.  sc.  4. 

'Tis  her  I  so  admire. 

Fletcher,  Faithful  Shepherdess,  act  i.  sc.  3. 

Thyself  and  them  shall  never  part  from  me 
Before  I  crown  you  kings  in  Asia. 

Marlowe,  Tamburlaine  /.,  act  i.  sc.  2. 

It  was  not  me  you  followed  last  night  to  my  lodging  from  the 
Park.  —  Wvcherley,  Love  in  a  Wood,  act  v.  sc.  5. 

I  may  be  pretty  well  assured  it  is  not  me. 

Addison,  Drummer,  act  ii.  sc.  r. 

It  is  evident,  then,  that  if  Atossa  was  the  first  inventress  of  epis- 
tles, these  that  carry  the  name  of  Phalaris,  who  was  so  much  older 
than  her,  must  needs  be  an  imposture.  —  BENTLEY,  Dissertation 
upon  Phalaris  (Ed.  Dyce),  volume  ii.  page  126. 


276  English  Language. 

also  dropped  the  final  -;/  at  the  same  time.  Corre- 
sponding to  the  genitive  plurals,  also,  were  the  adjective 
pronouns  ure  or  user,  'our,'  and  eower,  'your.'  The 
corresponding  adjective  pronoun  of  the  third  person 
was  sin  ;  but,  even  when  Anglo-Saxon  was  committed 
to  writing,  it  was  already  on  the  point  of  dying  out. 
Sin  occurs  not  often  under  any  circumstances,  and 
almost  wholly  in  poetry,  though  it  is  not  unknown  to 
prose.1  Its  loss  has  been  a  serious  disadvantage  to 
the  precision  and  clearness  of  the  language  ;  for  while 
its  place  was  taken  in  Anglo-Saxon  by  the  genitives 
his,  hire,  and  hira  of  the  third  personal  pronoun,  it 
was  not  filled. 

119.  These  genitives  of  the  first  and  second  per- 
sonal pronouns  were,  therefore,  the  same  in  form  as 
the  nominative  singular  of  the  corresponding  posses- 
sive pronouns  during  the  Anglo-Saxon  period.  But, 
inasmuch  as  then  the  former  were  governed  directly 
by  verbs  or  prepositions,  while  the  latter  had  full  ad- 
jective inflections,  the  distinction  between  them  was 
in  most  cases  apparent.  The  changes  that  subsequently 
took  place  in  the  language  rendered  this  distinction 
less  obvious.  On  the  one  hand,  the  genitive  became 
more  and  more  confined  to  the  expression  of  the 
possessive  relation,  and  was  no  longer  made  the  object 
of  verbs  and  prepositions.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
adjective  inflection  of  the  possessive  pronoun  had  en- 
tirely disappeared.  As  a  result  the  distinction  between 
the   two    classes   became    rather   nominal    than    real. 

1  E.g.,  Blickl'mg  Homilies,  page  125,  line  21. 


The  Personal  Pronouns.  277 

Whether  the  same  word  should  be  regarded  as  the 
genitive  of  the  personal  pronoun,  or  itself  as  the  pos- 
sessive adjective  pronoun,  depended  mainly  upon 
definition.  The  genitive,  especially  in  the  plural, 
lasted  down,  to  be  sure,  to  the  end  of  the  fourteenth 
century,  in  phrases  in  which  there  could  be  no  doubt 
as  to  its  being  a  personal  pronoun,  such  as,  at  onre 
alther  cost,1  meaning  '  at  the  cost  of  us  all ; '  or,  /  am 
yowre  aller  lied,  I  am  yowre  aller  hele,2  that  is,  '  I  am 
the  head  of  you  all,  I  am  the  salvation  (heat)  of  you 
all.'  Even  down  to  the  beginning  of  the  sixteenth 
century  similar  usages  occasionally  occur.3  Still  such 
expressions  as  these,  comparatively  infrequent  then, 
have  not  been  preserved  in  Modern  English  :  hence 
some  grammarians  consider  the  genitive  of  the  per- 
sonal pronouns  as  no  longer  existing,  terming  these 
forms,  wherever  they  occur,  possessive  adjective  pro- 
nouns.    In  either  case  their  history  is  the  same. 

120.  The  contracted  forms  mi  and  thi,  for  min  and 
thin,  made  their  appearance  at  the  end  of  the  twelfth 
century,  and  were  at  first  used  indifferently.  As  early 
certainly  as  the  fourteenth  century,  however,  a  prac- 
tice sprang  up  of  using  min  and  thin  before  words 
beginning  with  a  vowel  or  silent  //,  and  mi  and  tlii 
before  consonants.     This  custom,  it  may  be  added, 

1  Chaucer,  Canterbury  Tales,  Prologue,  line  799. 

2  Langland,  Piers  Plowman,  Text  B,  xix.  468. 

3  It  was  their  bothes  ('  of  them  both  ')  dishonoures  and  theirs  and 
hirs  also  to  suffer  hvm  in  sanctuary.  —  Sir  Thomas  More,  Life 
of  Edward  /'.  in  Ellis's  reprint  of  Harding's  Chronicle,  etc.,  page 
487. 


278  English  Language. 

extended  to  non,  '  none,'  with  the  result  that  the 
abbreviated  form  no  has  become  the  established  one 
in  Modern  English.  The  practice  was  observed,  with 
a  fair  degree  of  regularity,  up  to  the  latter  half  of  the 
sixteenth  century,  after  which  it  became  largely  a  mat- 
ter of  individual  choice.  In  process  of  time  my  and 
thy,  as  they  had  then  generally  come  to  be  spelled, 
were  used  almost  exclusively  before  nouns,  and  mine 
and  thine  when  standing  alone  in  the  predicate,  except 
in  a  few  phrases,  such  as  '  mine  host,'  that  had  sur- 
vived the  general  abandonment  of  the  ancient  usage. 
The  e  of  mine  and  thine  is,  of  course,  inorganic. 

121.  The  restriction  of  mine  and  thine  to  the  abso- 
lute construction  in  the  predicate  was  undoubtedly 
aided,  to  a  great  extent,  by  the  creation  of  the  forms 
oures,  you res,  and  hires,  '  hers,'  and  heres,  '  theirs,' 
and  their  confinement  to  this  same  employment. 
Originally  the  pronoun,  when  used  absolutely  in  the 
predicate,  had  simply  the  form  of  the  genitive  of  the 
personal  pronoun,  which  was  the  same  as  the  nomi- 
native of  the  possessive.  This  was  the  prevalent  prac- 
tice, not  only  in  the  Anglo-Saxon,  but  during  the  Old 
English  period  also,  at  least  in  the  Midland  and  South- 
ern dialects.  For  example,  the  sentence  '  the  land  is 
ours '  would  in  the  thirteenth  century  have  appeared 
as  '  the  land  is  oure.'  The  feeling,  that,  in  such  con- 
structions, the  pronouns  were  really  genitives  of  the 
personal  pronoun,  and  not  possessive  adjectives, 
seems  to  have  been  the  ruling  one.  But  by  the  four- 
teenth century,  -s  had  become  the  common  termina- 


The  Personal  Pronouns.  279 

tion  of  the  genitive  of  all  nouns,  and  was  the  termi- 
nation of  his,  the  masculine  and  neuter  genitive  of  the 
third  personal  pronoun.  This  letter  was  in  conse- 
quence added  by  a  false  analogy  to  the  other  forms. 
Accordingly,  early  in  the  Middle  English  period,  oures, 
yourcs,  hires,  '  hers,'  heres,  '  theirs,'  took  their  place 
alongside  of  the  earlier  oure,  youre,  hire,  and  here. 
The  former,  therefore,  are  strictly  double  genitives. 
They  first  made  their  appearance  in  the  speech  of  the 
North,  but,  in  the  fourteenth  century,  became  thor- 
oughly established  in  the  literary  language  of  the 
Midland  dialect.  For  a  time  they  flourished  side  by 
side  with  the  forms  without  -s,  which  etymologically 
are  more  correct.  In  the  fifteenth  century  they  dis- 
placed the  latter  altogether,  and  are  now  the  ones 
exclusively  in  use  in  the  construction  mentioned.1 
When  their  was  adopted  as  the  genitive  of  the  per- 
sonal pronoun,  in  place  of  here  (108),  it  also  added 
an  -s  in  such  cases,  like  the  others. 

122.  This  result  did  not  happen,  however,  without 
a  struggle.  Other  forms  existed,  which  have  left 
traces  of  themselves,  in  the  language  of  the  unedu- 
cated, to  this  day.  The  old  ^-declension,  both  of 
the  noun  and  adjective,  still  survived  in  the  fourteenth 
century  in  certain  parts  of  the  country.  It  was  then, 
as  we  have  seen,  applied  to  words  which  had  no  right 
to  it  in  Anglo-Saxon.     Various  dialects,  consequently, 

1  The  latest  use  of  the  simple  form  —  not  as  an  intentional  archa- 
ism —  I  have  observed  is  in  Capgrave's  Chronicle  of  England  (about 
1450) ,  under  date  of  A.D.  1024  ;  "  They  feyned  it  was  her  (hers)," 


280  English  Language. 

especially  of  the  South  of  England,  instead  of  form- 
ing, in  these  cases,  a  double  genitive  in  -s,  formed  one 
in  -;/.  The  result  was,  that,  in  place  of  oures,  youres, 
hires,  and  heres,  they  had  the  forms  oitren,  youren, 
hiren,  heren  (i.e.,  their'n).  To  this  the  analogy  of 
mine  and  thine  unquestionably  contributed.  These 
forms  in  -n  are  not  infrequent  in  the  Wycliffite  ver- 
sion of  the  Bible,  made  about  1380.  Inconsequence, 
during  the  latter  half  of  the  fourteenth  century,  the 
genitive  of  the  personal  pronoun,  when  used  in  the 
predicate,  can  be  found  in  three  forms,  —  without 
any  ending,  with  the  ending  -s,  or  with  the  ending  -//. 
The  following  examples  will  show  this  clearly  :  — 

I  wil  beyoure  in  al  that  ever  I  may. 

Chaucer,  Canon's  Yeoman's  Tale,  line  237. 

My  gold  is  youres,  whanne  that  you  lest. 

Shipman's  Tale,  line  2S4. 

But  the  erthetilieris  seiden  togidere,  This  is  the  eire;  come 
ye,  sle  we  hym,  and  the  eritage  schal  be  ourun.  —  Mark  xii.  8. 

Blessed  be  the  pore  in  spirit,  for  the  kyngdam  in  hevenes  is 
heren  (theirs).  —  Matthew  v.  3. 

Restore  thou  to  hir  alle  thinges  that  ben  hern  (hers). 

//  /Cings  viii.  6  (Purvey's  Recension). 

123.  The  forms  in  -//,  however,  speedily  disap- 
peared from  the  language  of  literature,  though  they 
have  exhibited  a  marked  vitality  in  the  language  of 
low  life,  litre,  again,  whenever  their  took  the  place 
of  here,  their1  n  was  formed,  after  the  analogy  of  the 
other  forms  in  -//,  by  those  who  employed  the  latter. 


The  Personal  Pronouns.  281 

In  fact,  this  was  sometimes  extended  to  his,  giving  us 
hisen  or  his'n  as  a  collateral  form.  This  can  be  found 
as  early  as  the  fifteenth  century.  In  one  of  the  man- 
uscripts of  Chaucer  occur,  for  example,  the  following 
lines  :  — 

Hire  fredom  fond  Arcyte  in  such  manere 
That  al  hisen  is  that  hirs  was,  moche  or  lyte. 

Anelida  and  Ay  cite,  line  107  (Harleian  M.S.  372). 

These  forms  in  -;/,  it  is  to  be  said  finally,  were  once 
falsely  explained  as  contractions  of  our  own,  your  own, 
her  own,  and  so  forth. 

124.  A  somewhat  peculiar  use  of  his  to  take  the 
place  of  the  ending  of  the  genitive  case  developed 
itself  in  Old  English,  and  prevailed  somewhat  exten- 
sively in  the  early  portion  of  the  Modern  English 
period.  We  can  see  it  exemplified  in  the  following 
passage  from  Shakspeare's  fifty-fifth  sonnet :  — 

Nor  Mars  his  sword  nor  war's  quick  fire  shall  burn 
The  living  record  of  your  memory. 

Traces  of  this  usage  can  be  discovered  even  in  Anglo- 
Saxon.1  In  the  first  text  of  Layamon,  written  about 
1200,  it  occurs  rarely,  but  is  frequently  found  in  the 
second  text,  supposed  to  be  about  fifty  years  later. 
But  it  was  not  till  the  sixteenth  century  that  it  began 
to  appear  often.  It  is  almost  always  used  with  names 
of  persons,   particularly  with   those   ending  with   the 

1  Matzner  quotes  from  Numbers  xiii.  29 :  \>xr  we  gesawon  Enac 
his  cynryn.  In  Authorized  Version;  We  saw  the  children  of  Anak 
there.     lb.,  verse  28. 


282  English  Language. 

sound  of  s.  After  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth 
century  it  was  but  little  employed,  though  it  lasted 
into  the  eighteenth.  The  title  of  Pope's  translation 
from  Statius,  first  printed  in  171 2,  has,  for  instance, 
the  heading,  "  The  First  Book  of  Statius  his  Thebais." 
In  scattered  instances  and  in  peculiar  constructions 
this  use  of  his  can  be  found  much  later. 

125.  This  peculiar  use  of  his  as  a  genitive  sign  led 
to  the  belief  which  once  largely  prevailed,  that  the 
-es  of  the  genitive  singular  —  which  in  Early  English 
often  appeared  as  -is  or  -ys  —  was  in  its  origin  a 
contraction  of  the  pronoun  his.  This  was  not  only 
widely  accepted,  but  was  at  one  time  held  and  taught 
by  many  grammarians,  in  particular  by  those  of  the 
seventeenth  century.  Even  as  late  as  1711,  Addison, 
in  commenting  on  the  letter  s,  gives  in  his  adhesion 
to  this  view.  "  I  might  here  observe,"  he  says,  "  that 
the  same  single  letter  on  many  occasions  does  the 
office  of  a  whole  word  and  represents  the  his  and  het 
of  our  forefathers."  '  This  belief  in  regard  to  his  led 
to  the  extension  in  the  sixteenth  century  of  the  same 
construction  to  her  with  feminine  nouns,  and  occa- 
sionally to  their  with  the  plural.  For  instance,  Bar- 
nabe  Riche,  in  his  story  of  Apollonius  and  Silla,  in  the 
work  published  in  15S1,  under  the  title  of  "Riche  his 
Farewell  to  Militarie  Profession,"  begins  his  account 
of  the  heroine  with  these  words  :  — 

The  daughter  her  name  was  Silla.2 

1  Spectator,  No.  135,  Aug.  |.  1711. 

-  Shakspeare   Society   reprint    (1846),   page  69.      For   their   as 


The  Reflexive  Pronouns.  283 

Still,  as  in  the  similar  case  of  his,  the  pronoun  was 
rarely  used,  save  with  the  names  of  persons. 

126.  In  Anglo-Saxon  the  simple  personal  pronouns 
were  constantly  employed  also  as  reflexives.  This 
use  of  them  has  lasted  down  through  all  periods  of 
the  language  to  this  day,  though  it  is  far  less  common 
now  than  formerly.  From  its  very  nature  it  led  fre- 
quently to  ambiguity.  If  there  were  no  other  reflexives 
than  the  simple  personal  pronouns,  such  an  expression 
as  "  he  killed  him  "  would  have,  beside  the  sense  it 
now  has,  the  possible  signification  of  "  he  killed  him- 
self." Consequently  a  disposition  began  to  be  mani- 
fested in  the  earliest  speech,  to  make  the  reflexive 
sense  more  clear  and  emphatic.  This  was  accom- 
plished by  the  addition  of  the  forms  of  the  adjective 
self  to  the  corresponding  forms  of  the  personal  pro- 
nouns ;  thus  the  dative  himself  would  be  in  Anglo- 
Saxon  him  sclfuin ;  the  accusative,  hine  selfne.  This 
tendency  has  gone  on  increasing  to  the  present  time, 
so  that  outside  of  the  language  of  poetry,  the  simple 
personal  pronouns  are  rarely  used  any  longer  in  a 
reflexive  sense.  When  this  does  occur,  it  is  usually 
in  phrases  where  the  context  would  dispel  any  doubt 
as  to  the  meaning.  It  is  perhaps  most  common  when 
the  pronoun  is  preceded  by  a  preposition,  though 
even  here  it  is  far  from  being  universal.     In  such  an 


representing  the  's  of  the  genitive,  the  following  example  will  serve, 
from  Humphrey  Monmouth's  petition  to  Cardinal  Wolsey,  in  1528. 
"  I  did  promise  him  (Tyndale)  x  I.  sterling  to  paie  for  my  father 
and  mother  there  sowles  and  al  Christen  sowles." 


284  English  Language. 

expression  as  "  he  looked  about  him,"  him  is  a  genuine 
reflexive,  precisely  equivalent  in  meaning  to  himself. 
On  the  other  hand,  in  the  expression  "  he  looked  at 
him,"  him  is  the  simple  personal  pronoun. 

127.  During  the  Old  English  period,  self,  like  other 
adjectives,  gradually  lost  its  inflection.  In  conse- 
quence it  was  often  looked  upon,  both  then  and 
later,  merely  as  a  substantive,  forming  by  its  combina- 
tion with  the  personal  pronoun  an  independent  word. 
This  tendency  was  even  seen  in  the  Anglo-Saxon.1 
This  seems  to  be  the  reason  why  self,  when  stripped  of 
its  inflections,  was  joined  to  the  genitive  of  the 
pronouns  of  the  first  and  second  persons,  or,  perhaps, 
it  would  be  more  correct  to  say,  it  was  treated  as  a 
substantive,  with  which  agreed  the  possessive  adjective 
pronouns  corresponding  to  the  genitive  of  these  per- 
sonal pronouns.  At  any  rate,  during  the  Old  English 
period,  the  forms  myself,  thyself  ourself  and  yourself 
became  established  in  the  language  and  have  since 
remained  unchanged.  Along  with  them  were  also  in 
use,  me  self,  tliee  self,  us  self,  and  you  self.  Moth  kinds 
of  forms,  in  fact,  were  sometimes  employed  in  the 
same  work.  Still  the  latter,  based  upon  the  joining  of 
self  to  the  original  dative  case,  called  later  the  objec- 
tive, could  not  maintain  itself  against  the  former,  and 
died  out  during  the  Middle  English  period. 

128.  The  case  was  different  with  the  pronouns  of 

1  Matzner   cites,   along  with   others,  the  following  extract  from 
the   Anglo-Saxon   Gospel   of  Nicodemus,  34:     Hym  sylf  wees  on 
Fenas  farende. 


The  Reflexive  Pronouns.  285 

the  third  person.  There  the  forms  resulting  from 
the  combination  of  self  with  the  dative  became  the 
ones  established  in  the  language.  Himself  herself 
and  hemself  "themselves,"  were  the  forms  earl}-  in 
established  use.  Itself  really  belongs  to  the  same  class, 
because  in  the  adoption  of  the  dative  to  represent  both 
the  original  dative  and  accusative,  it,  though  strictly 
an  accusative,  had  for  reasons  previously  given  (no) 
become  the  new  objective.  Later  there  were  attempts 
occasionally  made  to  cause  these  reflexives  to  conform 
to  those  of  the  first  and  second  persons.  In  the 
fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries  particularly,  his  self 
and  their  self  or  their  selves  are  occasionally  found  ; 
but  they  never  could  be  said  to  have  anything  like 
the  prevalence  of  the  common  forms. 

129.  The  form  themselves,  for  which  theirselves  was 
sometimes  substituted,  represents  a  plural  inflection 
which  these  pronouns  were  late  in  receiving.  The 
only  modification  that  for  a  long  time  took  place  in 
them  was  the  frequent  adding  of  the  syllable  -en,  — 
sometimes  abbreviated  to  e,  —  giving  such  forms  as 
myselve{ii),  himselve(n).  This  termination,  however, 
furnished  merely  a  collateral  form  :  it  did  not  indicate 
inflection.  The  plural  of  these  reflexives  remained  the 
same  as  the  singular ;  no  distinction  existed  between 
them  till  towards  the  close  of  the  Middle  English 
period.  As  late  as  the  beginning  of  the  sixteenth  century 
oursetf  and  yourself,  for  illustration,  would  be  gener- 
ally, perhaps  invariably,  the  same  in  both  numbers. 
In  the  first  half  of   the  century,  however,  the  plural 


286  English   Language. 

ending  -s  was  added  to  the  reflexive  forms  which 
were  plural  in  signification,  and  this  practice  speedily 
became  universal.  In  conclusion,  the  disposition  to 
use,  as  the  subject  of  the  sentence,  the  personal  pro-' 
noun  compounded  with  self  in  place  of  the  corre- 
sponding simple  personal  pronoun1  goes  back  to  the 
Old  English,  if  not  to  the  Anglo-Saxon,2  period,  and 
has  been  in  common  and  constant  use  since. 

130.  There  remains  a  usage  the  consideration  of 
which  belongs  more  strictly  to  syntax  than  even  the 
one  just  mentioned  ;  but,  as  it  is  of  some  importance 
as  connected  with  the  disuse  of  certain  forms  of  the 
verb,  it  will  receive  a  slight  notice  at  this  point.  This 
is  the  general  abandonment  in  English  of  the  singular 
pronoun  of  the  second  person,  and  the  substitution  of 
the  plural  in  its  place.  In  this  respect  our  tongue 
does  not  differ  from  the  other  cultivated  tongues  of 
modern  Europe  ;  but,  in  its  avoidance  of  this  particu- 
lar form,  it  has  gone  far  beyond  them  all.  In  them  it 
is  the  language  of  superiority,  or  affectionate  intimacy  ; 
with  us  it  is,  outside  of  its  employment  in  poetry, 
limited,  for  all  practical  purposes,  to  the  language  of 
prayer.  This  result  has  been  reached  gradually.  The 
Anglo-Saxon,  like  the  Greek  and  Latin,  never  used, 
in  addressing  an  individual,  anything  but  the  second 
person  of  the  singular;  and  this  continued  to  be  the 
case,  in  our  tongue  also,  for  nearly  two  centuries  after 
the  Conquest. 

1  E.g.  Myself  am  Naples.     SHAKSPEARE,  Tempest,  act  i.  sc.  2. 
-  Sec  see.  127,  note. 


Pronouns  of  Address.  287 

131.  The  substitution  of  the  plural  ye  and  you  for 
thou  and  thee  in  speaking  to  a  single  person,  made  its 
appearance  in  the  language  towards  the  close  of  the 
thirteenth  century.  At  the  outset  it  was  not  merely 
little  in  use,  it  was  restricted  to  narrow  and  well-defined 
limits.  When  so  substituted,  it  was  generally,  if  not 
invariably,  employed  as  a  mark  of  respect  in  address- 
ing a  superior.  In  the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth  cen- 
turies the  use  of  the  plural  steadily  increased,  and  in 
the  sixteenth  century  it  became  the  standard  form  of 
polite  conversation.  Thou  and  thee  followed  to  some 
extent  the  history  of  similar  forms  in  other  tongues. 
For  some  two  centuries  it  may  be  said  that  in  a 
general  way  they  were  employed  to  denote  affection 
or  inferiority  or  contempt.  There  is  a  well-known 
passage  in  Shakspeare,  in  which  one  of  the  characters 
is  represented  as  urging  another  to  write  an  insulting 
challenge.1  "Taunt  him,"  he  says,  "with  the  license 
of  ink  :  if  thou  thou 'st  him  some  thrice,  it  shall  not 
be  amiss."  This  example  is  frequently  coupled  with 
the  abusive  language  directed  by  Coke,  the  attorney- 
general,  towards  Sir  Walter  Raleigh,  when  the  latter 
was  undergoing  trial  for  high  treason  in  November, 
1603.  During  the  proceedings  Raleigh  was  addressed 
as  you  by  those  acting  as  judges.  This  pronoun  was 
sometimes  employed  also  by  the  attorney-general,  but 
whenever  he  wished  to  express  denunciation,  he  re- 
sorted to  thou,  and  did  so  intentionally.  When 
Raleigh    denied    that    he    was    responsible   for    Lord 

1  Twelfth  Night,  act  iii.  sc.  2. 


288  English  Language. 

*  ** 

Cobham's  course,  Coke  retorted,  "  All  that  he  did  was 
by  thy  instigation,  thou  viper  :  for  I  thou  thee,  thdu 
traitor  !  " l 

132.  Such  examples  are  sufficient  to  show  that  the 
use  of  the  singular  towards  persons  of  the  same  station, 
but  standing  in  no  special  relation  of  intimacy  to  one 
another,  was  intended  to  be  insulting  and  was  so 
regarded.  Its  employment  towards  inferiors  and  for 
the  purpose  of  expressing  affection  can  be  met  with 
constantly,  especially  in  the  pages  of  the  Elizabethan 
dramatists.  Yet  the  distinction  between  thou,  thee 
and  ye,  you,  was  never  thorough-going  in  English.  The 
rigid  rules  that  have  been  authoritatively  laid  down  for 
their  exact  employment  will  not  stand  the  test  of  careful 
examination.  The  same  character  addressing  another 
in  the  same  conversation  will  frequently  pass  from  the 
singular  pronoun  to  the  plural,  and  from  the  plural  pro- 
noun to  the  singular,  without  any  conceivable  reason. 
The  transition  will  sometimes  even  occur  in  the  same 
sentence.  In  particular,  it  is  often  the  case  that  the 
nominative  or  objective  of  the  singular  will  be  found 
immediately  joined  with  the  possessive  pronoun  repre- 
senting the   plural.      The  pages  of  any   Elizabethan 

1  The  following  conversation  between  the  two,  later  in  the  trial, 
will  show  the  use  of  these  pronouns:  — 

Coke.  Thou  art  the  most  vile  and  execrable  traitor  that  ever  lived. 

Raleigh.    You  speak  indiscreetly,  barbarously,  and  uncivilly. 
ie.    I  want  words  sufficient  to  express  thy  viperous  treason. 

Raleigh,  I  think  you  want  words,  indeed,  for  you  have  spoken 
one  thing  half  a  dozen  times. 

Coke.  Thou  art  an  odious  fellow;  thy  name  is  hateful  to  all  the 
realm  ol  England  for  thy  pride. 


The  Interrogative  Pronouns.  289 

dramatist  will  exemplify  these  practices.1  But  after 
the  sixteenth  century,  the  singular  form  was  more  and 
more  disused,  and  by  the  eighteenth  had  become  com- 
paratively infrequent.  As  thou  was  almost  the  only 
subject  the  second  person  of  the  verb  ever  had,  the 
disuse  of  the  pronoun  led  indirectly  to  the  compara- 
tive disuse  of  this  form  of  the  verb. 

The  Interrogative  Pronouns. 

133.  In  the  Anglo-Saxon  period  the  interrogative 
pronouns  were  hwa,  '  who ' ;  hwcet, '  what ' ;  hwile,  '  of 
what  sort '  ;  aud  hwceder,  '  which  of  two.'  During  the 
twelfth  century  the  words  which  had  originally  begun 
with  the  combination  hw  changed  their  form,  and 
were  spelled  with  wh;  and  this  has  from  that  time 
remained  the  universal  practice.  Of  these  four  inter- 
rogatives,  hwilc  and  hwcede r  had  a  full  set  of  adjective 
inflections  according  to  the  indefinite  declension,  vary- 
ing therefore  with  the  gender.  On  the  other  hand, 
hwa  was  used  both  as  a  masculine  and  a  feminine,  the 
special  feminine  form  which  belonged  to  the  primitive 
Teutonic  having  disappeared  from  the  Anglo-Saxon 
and  from  the  other  sister-languages,  with  the  excep- 
tion of  the  Gothic.  Of  course,  hwcet  is  strictly  the 
neuter  of  hwa. 

134.  In  Anglo-Saxon,  hwa  and  hwcet  have  the 
following  inflections  :  — 


't> 


1  E.g.  I  am  more  serious  than  my  custom  :  you 
Must  be  so  too,  if  heed  me  ;  which  to  do 
Trebles  thee  o'er. 

SHAKSPEARE,  Tempest,  act  ii.  sc.  1. 


290 


English 

Language. 

Masculine  and  Feminine. 

Neuter. 

Nom.  hwa, 

hwret, 

Gen.    hvvses, 

hw.es, 

Dal.     hwam, 

hwam, 

Ace.      hwone. 

hwret, 

Inst. 

hwy. 

In  general  it  can  be  said  that  this  pronoun  has  had 
the  same  history  essentially  as  the  personal  pronouns, 
especially  the  pronoun  of  the  third  person.  In  the 
Early  English  period  the  dative  hwam,  '  whom,'  sup- 
planted the  accusative  hwone  in  the  masculine,  as 
him  did  hine.  As  him  gradually  became  confined  to 
this  gender,  and  the  accusative  hit  or  it  took  its  place 
in  the  neuter,  so  whom  came,  even  earlier,  to  be  used 
only  of  persons,  and  the  accusative  what  was  con- 
fined to  inquiries  about  objects  without  life.  Again, 
just  as  his  lost  its  original  neuter  sense,  and  was  re- 
placed  by  its,  so  whose  has  been  limited  to  persons. 
Questions  in  regard  to  things  are  no  longer  intro- 
duced by  whose,  but  instead  by  what  or  which  with 
the  preposition  of. 

135.  So,  also,  in  the  sixteenth  century,  the  same 
confounding  of  the  nominative  and  objective  cases 
that  occurred  with  the  personal  pronouns  occurred 
also  with  this  interrogative.  Whom  is  sometimes 
used  where  strict  grammar  requires  who ;  but  far 
more  frequently  was  who  used  where  whom  would 
be  the  form  expected.  This  usage  becomes  first  con- 
spicuous  in  the  dramatic  writings  ^[  the  Elizabethan 


The  Interrogative  Pronouns.  291 

period.  In  them  sentences  such  as  these  constantly 
occur : — 

Who  have  we  here  ?  —  Peele,  Edward  I. 
Who  do  you  take  me  to  be  ?  —  Greene,  George  a- Greene. 
I   see  who  he  laughed  at.  —  Jonson,    Every   Man    in    his 
Humor. 

The  frequency  with  which  they  are  put  into  the  mouths 
of  speakers  of  every  social  grade  furnishes  clear  proof 
that  they  were  not  felt  to  be  improper.  But  the 
usage  of  who  for  whom  is  far  from  having  been  lim- 
ited to  this  period.  It  may  be  said  to  have  charac- 
terized the  colloquial  speech  of  England  from  the 
latter  half  of  the  sixteenth  century  to  the  present  time, 
if  the  language  of  conversation  has  been  justly  repre- 
sented in  the  literature  which  purports  to  reproduce 
it.  So  widespread  and  persistent  is  this  usage,  in  fact, 
that  such  a  strictly  correct  sentence,  for  instance,  as 
"Whom  did  you  go  to  see?"  is  regarded  by  many 
educated  men  as  being  of  the  nature  of  a  pedantic 
deviation  from  the  normal  method  of  expression,  and 
as  representing  the  artificial  speech  of  grammarians, 
rather  than  the  natural  speech  of  real  life. 

136.  Hivilc  was  represented  in  the  dialects  and 
sub-dialects  of  Early  English  by  various  forms,  among 
which  are  whulc,  wulch,  juucli,  wich,  quilk,  whilk,  and 
which.  Some  of  them  have  been  made  somewhat 
familiar  by  their  occurrence  in  the  Scotch  dialect.  As 
early  as  the  Middle  English  period,  however,  which 
had  become  established  in  the  language  of  literature, 


292  English  Language. 

and  has  ever  since  remained  die  standard  form.  Like 
its  correlative,  swile,  which  became  such  ( 101 ),  it  is 
a  compound  of  lie,  '  like,'  and  was  originally  inflected 
according  to  the  indefinite  declension  of  the  adjective. 
The  history  of  its  forms  is  consequently  included  in 
the  history  of  that  part  of  speech. 

137.  A  similar  statement  can  be  made  of  the  inter- 
rogative hweeder,  '  which  of  two,'  which  was  originally 
inflected  like  the  indefinite  adjective.  The  dual  sense 
of  this  word  began  to  fail  even  in  the  Anglo-Saxon 
period.  In  consequence  it  was  sometimes  strength- 
ened by  the  numeral,  as  in  Matthew,  chapter  xxi.,  verse 
31,  where,  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  version,  we  read  :  — 

HwceNer  I>ara  twegra  dyde  bees  feeder  vvillan  ? 

This,  in  the  sixteenth  century  translation  now  used  by 
us,  has  the  same  construction  :  "  Whether  of  them 
twain  did  the  will  of  his  father?"  The  use  of  w 'h ether 
as  an  interrogative  pronoun  was  never  very  common, 
at  least  after  the  fourteenth  century.  It  occasionally 
made  its  appearance,  indeed,  down  to  the  end  of  the 
sixteenth,  as,  for  example  :  — 

To  whether  didst  thou  yield  ?  —  Spanish  Tragedy,  act  i. 

[ts  place  was  taken  by  which.  The  corresponding 
interrogative  adverb  whether  also  ceased  to  be  used  in 
direct  questions,'  though  in  indirect  ones  it  is  regularly 
employ*  'I. 

1  A'.;'.  Whether  am  I  not  betere  to  thee  than  ten  sones  ?  — 
/  Samuel  i.  8  (Wycliffite  version). 


The  Relative  Pronouns.  293 

138.  An  interrogative  pronoun,  signifying  "who 
of  many,"  existed  in  the  primitive  Teutonic,  and  was 
transmitted  to  the  Gothic  and  the  Old  Norse,  but  was 
not  preserved  in  the  High  German  or  in  any  dialect  of 
the  Low  Germanic  group.  Compound  forms  of  the 
interrogatives  have  been  in  use  during  every  period  of 
English  ;  but  the  inflection  of  the  simple  forms  has 
not  been  in  the  least  modified  by  this  fact.  In  con- 
clusion, it  is  to  be  remarked  that  the  instrumental  case 
hwy  has  given  to  the  tongue  the  two  interrogative 
adverbs  how  and  why. 

The  Relative  Pronouns. 

139.  The  Teutonic  did  not  possess  a  relative  in  the 
strict  sense  of  the  word ;  and,  for  the  representation 
of  it,  the  English,  during  every  period  of  its  history, 
has  been  obliged  to  have  recourse  to  other  pronouns. 
In  Anglo-Saxon  the  duty  of  the  relative  was  performed 
by  the  following  words  or  phrases  :  — 

1.  By  the  demonstrative  pronoun  se,  seo.  ficct. 

2.  By  fie  the  collateral  form  of  the  demonstrative  se. 
As  this  was  indeclinable,  it  could  be  employed  for  an 
antecedent  of  any  gender,  number,  or  person. 

3.  By  the  joining  of  the  indeclinable/^  to  the  forms 
of  the  demonstrative,  giving,  for  example,  in  the  nomi- 
native singular,  se  fie,  seo  fie,  ficct  fie,  or  ficette. 

4.  By  the  joining  of  fie  to  the  personal  pronouns, 
frequently  with  words  intervening. 

140.  After  the  Conquest  the  use  of  fie  was  the  first 


294  English  Language. 

to    be  given  up,  —  a   result   which    was   unavoidably 
hastened  by  the  disposition  to  employ  that  form  ex- 
clusively  for   the    definite    article.     Still  it  was  used 
occasionally  as  late  as  the  beginning  of  the  thirteenth 
century.     All  the  forms  of  the  demonstrative  se,  seo, 
/net,  were  maintained  as  relatives  down  to  the  end  of 
the   twelfth  century  with  varying  degrees  of  vitality. 
The  one  that  was  most  in  use,  however,  was  the  neuter 
nominative  and  accusative  singular  /net.    This  speedily 
took  the  place  of  the  old  indeclinable  />e  as  the  repre- 
sentative of  all  persons,  genders,  numbers,  and  cases. 
By  the  beginning  of  the  thirteenth  century  the  use  of 
that  as  a  general  relative,  referring  both  to  persons  and 
things,  was  widely  established  ;  by  the  middle  of  the 
same  century  it  had  become  universal.     Such  it  has 
remained  through  every  subsequent  period  of  English. 
Other  words  have  taken  their  place  alongside  of  it ; 
but  there  has  never  been  a  time  since  the  twelfth  cen- 
tury when  it  has  not  been  in  constant  employment  as 
a  relative. 

141.  With  this  form  alone,  however,  the  language 
was  not  content.  At  an  early  period  it  began  to 
resort  to  the  interrogative  pronouns  for  additional 
relatives.  The  first  of  these  that  came  into  general  use 
was  which.  The  employment  of  this  interrogative  as  a 
relative  goes  back  to  the  beginning  of  the  thirteenth 
century,  and  by  the  end  of  the  fourteenth  it  was 
thoroughly  established.  It  was  sometimes  preceded 
by  the  definite  article,  giving  us  the  expression  the 
which.     This  was  not  uncommon    in    Kariy   English, 


The  Relative  Pronouns.  295 

but  it  is  now  archaic,  and  rarely  found  except  in  the 
language  of  poetry.  Still  more  frequently,  perhaps, 
was  which  followed  by  that  The  tendency  to  use  the 
simple  form  alone  constantly  grew  stronger,  however, 
and  after  the  fourteenth  century  it  became  the  general 
practice.  From  this  century  till  the  seventeenth  it 
was  regularly  employed  in  reference  to  persons  as  well 
as  to  things.  This  idiom  has  been  made  familiar  to  all 
by  the  phrase  "  Our  Father  which  art  in  heaven," 
occurring  in  the  Lord's  Prayer.  In  the  seventeenth 
century  the  tendency  manifested  itself,  with  the  in- 
creasing use  of  who  as  a  relative,  to  confine  the 
reference  of  which  solely  to  things.  This  may  be  said 
to  have  now  become  established.  But  in  many  kinds 
of  expression  usage  is  still  very  uncertain,  and  no  hard 
and  fast  rules  can  be  laid  down  about  the  employment 
of  this  relative  which  will  be  sanctioned  by  the  uni- 
form practice  of  the  best  writers. 

142.  At  an  early  period,  whose,  and  whom,  the 
oblique  cases  of  the  interrogative  who,  were  also  used 
as  relatives.  This  practice  may  be  said  to  have  origi- 
nated about  the  beginning  of  the  thirteenth  century, 
and  to  have  steadily  increased  in  use  from  that  time. 
Sometimes,  though  rarely,  these  words,  like  which, 
were  preceded  by  the}  The  use  of  the  nominative 
who  as  a  relative  was  later.     It  was  not  till  the  early 

1  Desyryng  evere  more 
To  knowen  fully,  if  it  youre  wille  were, 
How  ye  han  ferd  and  don  whyl  ye  be  there  : 
The  w/ios  welfare  and  hele  ek  God  encresse. 

Chaucer,  Trdihis  and  Ctyseyde,  v.  1356-1359. 


296  English  Language. 

part  of  the  sixteenth  century  that  its  employment  in 
this  way  was  established,  though  occasional  instances 
of  such  usage  occur  previously.  Nor  was  who,  even 
during  the  sixteenth  century,  common  as  a  relative, 
though  constantly  becoming  more  so ;  but  in  the 
seventeenth  century  it  came  into  general  use. 

143.  At  the  outset  who  as  a  relative  was  not  abso- 
lutely limited  to  persons  :  it  occasionally,  though  not 
frequently,  referred  to  objects  without  life.  From  the 
latter,  however,  it  was  shut  out  by  the  distinction  that 
gradually  developed  itself  between  it  and  which,  in 
accordance  wherewith  the  former  was  confined  to 
personal  and  the  latter  to  impersonal  antecedents. 
In  this  matter  the  objective  whom  has  the  same  his- 
tory as  the  nominative  who.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
genitive  whose  as  a  relative,  has,  during  all  the  periods 
of  English,  been  applied  equally  to  persons  and  to 
things.  In  the  latter  usage  it  is  etymologically  the 
genitive,  not  of  who,  but  of  what  (134)  ;  and  in  sense 
it  corresponds  both  to  '  of  whom  '  and  to  '  of  which.' 
The  grammatical  rule  sometimes  laid  down  that  re- 
quires its  antecedent  to  be  a  person  is  neither  based 
upon  the  etymology  of  the  word,  nor  what  in  this 
matter  is  of  more  importance,  the  usage  of  the  best 
writers  and  speakers. 

144.  It  will  be  seen  from  the  foregoing  account 
that  the  oldest  of  our  existing  relatives  is  that,  and  who 
the  youngest;  and  furthermore,  that  the  marked  dis- 
tinction between  the  use  of  who  and  which  is  later 
than  the  sixteenth  century.     Yet  how  completely  all 


The  Relative  Pronouns.  297 

knowledge  of  these  facts  had  been  lost  by  the  begin- 
ning of  the  eighteenth  century  is  clearly  shown  by  one 
of  the  essays  in  the  Spectator.  In  No.  78  of  that 
periodical,  which  appeared  on  May  30,  171  iv  Steele, 
the  author,  appended  "  the  humble  petition  of  who  and 
which."  In  it,  among  other  things,  the  petitioners  are 
represented  as  making  the  following  statements  :  — 

We  are  descended  of  ancient  families,  and  kept  up  our 
dignity  and  honor  many  years,  till  the  jack-sprat  THAT  sup- 
planted us.  How  often  have  we  found  ourselves  slighted  by 
the  clergy  in  their  pulpits  and  the  lawyers  at  the  bar.  Nay, 
how  often  have  we  heard  in  one  of  the  most  polite  and  august 
assemblies  in  the  universe,  to  our  great  mortification,  these 
words,  "That  that  that  noble  lord  urged";  which  if  one  of  us 
had  had  justice  done,  would  have  sounded  nobler  thus,  "  That 
which  that  noble  lord  urged.''  Senates  themselves,  the  guar- 
dians of  British  liberty,  have  degraded  us  and  preferred  that  to 
us;  and  yet  no  decree  was  ever  given  against  us.  In  the  very 
acts  of  parliament,  in  which  the  utmost  right  should  be  done  to 
every  body,  word  and  thing,  we  find  ourselves  often  either  not 
used,  or  used  one  instead  of  another.  In  the  first  and  best 
prayer  children  are  taught,  they  learn  to  misuse  us.  "Our 
Father  which  art  in  heaven  "  should  be  "  Our  Father  who  art  in 
heaven";  and  even  a  convocation,  after  long  debates,  refused 
to  consent  to  an  alteration  of  it.  In  our  general  confession  we 
say,  "  Spare  thou  them,  O  God,  which  confess  their  faults," 
which  ought  to  be  "who  confess  their  faults."  What  hopes 
then  have  we  of  having  justice  done  us,  when  the  makers  of  our 
very  prayers  and  laws,  and  the  most  learned  in  all  faculties, 
seem  to  be  in  a  confederacy  against  us,  and  our  enemies  them- 
selves must  be  our  judges? 

145.  The  confusion  between  the  nominative  and 
objective  of  the  interrogative  who  naturally  extended 


298  English  Language. 

itself  to  the  word  when  used  as  a  relative.  In  one 
instance  the  confusion  has  perpetuated  itself  to  our 
own  time,  and  has  become  established  in  usage.  This 
is  in  the  phrase  than  whom,  which  has  been  both  com- 
mon and  classical  from  the  latter  half  of  the  sixteenth 
century.  Modern  grammarians,  in  this  case,  are  often 
disposed  in  consequence  to  treat  than,  not  as  a  con- 
junction, but  as  a  preposition.  There  is  reason  to 
suppose  that  the  general  perpetuation,  if  not  the  cre- 
ation of  this  particular  idiom,  was  largely  influenced 
by  the  two  constructions  in  Latin  of  the  comparative 
with  quam,  and  with  the  ablative. 

146.  One  relative  construction  lasted  down  to  the 
beginning  of  the  Middle  English  period,  and  then  died 
out,  except  in  the  language  of  low  life.  This  is  the 
fourth  one  mentioned,  as  found  in  Anglo-Saxon,  in 
which  the  demonstrative  se,  seo,  fiat  was  united  with 
a  personal  pronoun.  This  continued  to  survive  in  a 
modified  form.  The  demonstrative  that  was  joined 
with  the  pronouns  of  the  third  person,  usually  with  a 
number  of  words  intervening,  to  form  the  relative. 
Accordingly  that — he  was  equivalent  to  who;  that — 
his  and  tliat — her  to  whose;  that — him  and  that — 
hem  to  whom  or  which.  This  relative  construction  is 
found  sometimes  in  Chaucer,  and  may  be  illustrated 
by  the  following  examples:  — 

A  Knight  there  was  and  that  a  worthy  man, 
That  fro  tlic  tyme  that  he  first  began 
To  ryden  out,  he  loved  chivalrye. 

Prologue  to  Canterbury  'Jala,  lines  43-45. 


The  Indefinite  Pronouns.  299 

Now  fele  I  wel  the  goodnesse  of  this  wyf, 
That  bothe  after  her  deeth  and  in  her  lyf, 
Her  grete  bountee  doubleth  her  renoun. 

Legend  of  Good  Women,  lines  522-524. 

Wel  the  hotter  ben  the  gledis1  rede, 

1'hat  men  hem  wren'2  with  asshen  pale  and  dede. 

Troilus  and  Cryseyde,  ii.  539. 

Ill  the  modern  language  of  low  life  in  which  this  idiom 
is  preserved,  which  takes  the  place  of  that.6 

147.  The  indefinite  pronouns,  as  has  been  stated, 
had,  in  general,  either  the  inflection  of  the  noun  or  of 
the  adjective,  usually  the  latter.  The  words  so  entitled, 
which  existed  in  Anglo-Saxon,  excluding  the  compound 
forms,  have  been  transmitted  to  Modern  English,  with 
two  exceptions.  These  are  the  indeclinable  /?/<?, ' many,' 
and  man, '  one.'  The  former,  in  Early  English,  passed 
into  the  iormfele;  the  latter,  into  men,  or,  with  the 
-n  dropped,  into  me.  Both  died  out  in  the  fifteenth 
century.  Hwti,  '  some  one,'  was  in  Anglo-Saxon  also 
used  as  an  indefinite  pronoun,  and  lasted  down  to  the 
seventeenth  century  in  certain  phrases,  such  as,  "as 
who  should  say,"  which,  indeed,  in  poetry,  are  not 
yet  entirely  obsolete.  Another  indefinite  pronoun, 
an,  '  a  certain,'  was  also  the  numeral  '  one,'  and,  even 
during  the  Anglo-Saxon  period,  had  sometimes  the 
force  merely  of  the  indefinite  article.     Its  confinement 

1  Live  coals.  '-'  (  'over. 

3  See  for  illustration  the  following  extract  from  Pepys's  Diary, 
under  date  of  Aug.  20,  1663  :  "  At  noon  dined  at  home,  and  there 
found  a  little  girle  which  she  told  my  wife  her  name  was  Jinny,  by 
which  name  we  shall  call  her." 


300  English  Language. 

to  this  usage  became  more  thoroughly  established 
after  the  Norman  Conquest ;  and  in  Early  English  the 
custom  arose  of  dropping  the  final  -/;  before  words 
beginning  with  a  consonant  or  consonant  sound,  and 
of  retaining  it  before  words  beginning  with  a  vowel  or 
a  silent  //.  This  practice,  with  slight  exceptions,  has 
been  followed  to  the  present  day. 


CHAPTER   V. 
THE   VERB. 

THE  TEUTONIC  VERB.   GENERAL  STATEMENTS. 

148.  The  inflection  of  the  verb  was  at  one  time 
the  most  perplexing  problem  that  presented  itself  to 
the  student  of  the  English  language.  In  no  other 
part  of  speech  did  lawlessness  apparently  run  more 
riot ;  and  about  the  reason  for  this  condition  of  things 
absolute  ignorance  prevailed.  The  obscurity  envel- 
oping the  subject  was  admitted  by  the  early  gram- 
marians, who  recognized  the  existence  of  difficulties 
they  could  neither  explain  nor  remove.  Ben  Jonson 
(15737-1637),  as  great  a  scholar  as  he  was  a  poet,  left 
behind  him  a  grammar  of  our  tongue,  in  which  he 
confessed  his  inability  to  bring  order  out  of  this 
apparent  chaos.  "  We  have  set  down,"  he  wrote, 
"  that  that  in  our  judgment  agreeth  best  with  reason 
and  good  order.  Which  notwithstanding,  if  it  seem 
to  any  to  be  too  rough  hewed,  let  him  plane  it  out 
more  smoothly,  and  I  shall  not  only  not  envy  it,  but 
in  the  behalf  of  my  country,  most  heartily  thank  him 
for  so  great  a  benefit ;  hoping  that  I  shall  be  thought 

301 


302  English  Language. 

sufficiently  to  have  done  my  part,  if  in  tolling  this  bell 
I  may  draw  others  to  a  deeper  consideration  of  the 
matter  ;  for,  touching  myself,  I  must  needs  confess 
that  after  much  painful  churning,  this  only  would 
come,  which  here  we  have  devised." 

149.  It  was  not,  indeed,  till  the  present  century 
that  the  comparative  study  which  was  made  of  the 
early  Teutonic  tongues  enabled  scholars  to  set  forth 
the  exact  lines  of  demarcation  that  exist  between  the 
two  leading  conjugations  of  the  English  verb.  It  was 
only  through  this  study  that  the  origin  could  be  dis- 
covered of  the  many  real  and  apparent  anomalies  that 
are  still  found  in  this  part  of  speech.  The  difficulties 
that  once  beset  the  subject  have  now  been  almost 
entirely  cleared  away.  Yet  how  little  the  results  of 
these  scientific  investigations  have  been  diffused  is 
made  apparent  from  the  fact  that  the  majority  of 
English  grammars  in  use  continue  to  repeat  without 
hesitation  the  errors  of  the  past,  and  retain  still  the 
inaccurate  classification  which  confounds  the  regular 
verbs  of  one  conjugation  with  the  irregular  verbs  of 
the  other.  To  make  clear  the  origin  of  the  peculi- 
arities of  this  part  of  speech  and  the  present  condition 
of  the  individual  members  belonging  to  it,  will  be  the 
object  of  the  following  pages. 

150.  To  all  the  Teutonic  languages  the  following 
parts  of  the  verb  were  common  from  the  earliest 
period  of  their  history  :  — 

1.  d'wo  leading  conjugations. 

2.  One  voice,  —  the  active. 


The    Verb.  303 

3.  Three  finite  modes.  These  are  the  indicative, 
the  subjunctive,  —  sometimes  called  the  conjunctive, 
and  corresponding  to  the  Greek  optative,  —  and  the 
imperative. 

4.  An  infinitive,  and  an  active  and  a  passive  par- 
ticiple. 

5.  Two  simple  tenses, — -the  present  and  the  pret- 
erite. 

6.  Two  numbers,  —  the  singular  and  the  plural. 

7.  Three  persons,  —  the  first,  second,  and  third. 
Besides  these   forms   common   to   all,   the    Gothic 

retained  a  middle  voice  which  was  used  generally  in 
a  passive  sense,  and  a  dual  number  which  was  con- 
fined to  the  first  and  second  persons.  The  primitive 
method  of  forming  the  preterite  by  reduplication  (16) 
it  likewise  preserved  in  some  forty  verbs ;  but  of  this 
traces  only  can  be  found  in  the  other  Teutonic  lan- 
guages (17). 

151.  Excluding  the  Gothic,  the  Teutonic  has  ac- 
cordingly lost,  of  the  parts  belonging  to  the  primitive 
Indo-European  verb,  the  middle  voice  (also  used  as 
a  passive),  the  mode  corresponding  to  the  Greek 
subjunctive,  the  imperfect,  aorist,  and  future  tenses, 
and  the  dual  number. 

152.  According  to  its  method  of  forming  the  pret- 
erite, the  Teutonic  verb  is  divided  into  two  great 
conjugations.  One  is  called  either  the  Old,  or  the 
Strong  conjugation ;  the  other,  the  New,  or  the  Weak 
conjugation.  The  distinguishing  difference  in  their 
inflection  lies  in  the  addition  or  in  the  non-addition 


304  English  Language. 

of  a  syllable  to  the  root  to  form  the  preterite.  This 
additional  syllable,  in  some  modern  Teutonic  tongues, 
noticeably  in  English,  has  been,  in  many  cases,  cut 
down  to  a  single  letter.  Examples  of  this  conjuga- 
tion are  words  like  kill,  kill-ed ;  love,  love-d ;  think, 
though-t. 

153.  The  addition  of  a  syllable  was  the  particular 
characteristic  of  the  weak  conjugation.  On  the  other 
hand,  verbs  of  the  strong  conjugation  add  nothing  to 
form  the  preterite.  Thus,  in  Anglo-Saxon,  singan 
meant  '  to  sing  ' :  the  present  tense,  first  person  sin- 
gular, was  sing-e ;  the  preterite  of  the  same  person 
was  sang.  No  syllable  was  added,  as  in  the  case  of 
kill  and  love.  But  to  this  conjugation  belongs  a 
variation  of  the  radical  vowel,  which,  in  the  instance 
just  cited,  is  exemplified  by  the  change  of  i  to  a. 
This  is,  indeed,  one  of  its  most  marked  features,  and 
one  which  has  been  preserved  in  its  whole  subsequent 
history.  But  as  variation  of  the  vowel,  though  not 
due  to  the  same  cause,  is  found  in  a  few  verbs  of  the 
conjugation  which  added  a  syllable  to  form  the  pret- 
erite, this  variation  cannot  be  regarded  as  a  distinc- 
tive peculiarity.  Thus,  the  present  sell-c  of  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  weak  verb  sell- an  has  for  its  preterite  seal-de, 
the  e  of  the  one  tense  giving  place  to  ea  in  the  other ; 
and  Modern  English  still  retains  this  peculiarity  in  the 
iiit  sell  and  the  preterite  sol-d.  Accordingly,  it  is 
the  adding,  or  not  adding,  of  a  syllable,  which  is  the 
original  fundamental  distinction  between  the  two  con- 
jugations,  and  not  the  variation  of  vowel. 


The  Verb.  305 

154.  The  term  Old  is  employed  because  the  verbs 
belonging  to  the  conjugation  so-called  are  mainly  the 
primitive  verbs  of  the  Teutonic.  It  is  from  them,  or 
from  nouns,  that  the  verbs  of  the  New  conjugation  with 
a  few  exceptions  have  been  derived,  and  their  name 
corresponds  to  their  origin.  The  terms  Strong  and 
Weak  were  first  applied  by  Grimm,  on  the  theory  that 
verbs  of  the  one  conjugation  expressed  the  idea  of 
past  time  by  a  mere  modification  of  their  own  re- 
sources, that  is,  by  changing  the  radical  vowel ;  while 
those  of  the  other  had  to  call  in  the  help  of  an  addi- 
tional syllable  to  achieve  the  same  result.  Though 
this  terminology  is  somewhat  fanciful,  it  is  convenient, 
and  has  come  into  general  use,  and  in  this  treatise 
will  be  ordinarily  employed.  The  terms  Regular  and 
Irregular,  as  commonly  employed  in  English  gram- 
mars, are  scientifically  incorrect,  because  they  blend 
in  one  class  the  strong  verbs  and  the  anomalous  verbs 
of  the  weak  conjugation. 

155.  The  syllable  which  is  added  to  form  the  pret- 
erite of  verbs  of  the  weak  conjugation  is  supposed, 
according  to  the  generally  received  theory,  to  be  the 
reduplicated  perfect  of  a  verb  corresponding  to  the 
English  verb  do.  In  Anglo-Saxon  the  infinitive  of 
this  was  don,  and  its  preterite,  dide,  the  modern  did : 
in  Old  High  German  the  corresponding  forms  were 
tuo7i  and  teta.  The  reduplicated  form  of  this  verb  is 
not  preserved  in  its  complete  state  in  the  preterites  of 
any  of  the  weak  verbs  in  the  Teutonic  languages, 
except  in  Gothic ;  and  there  it  is  not  found  in  the 


306  English  Lansriiare. 


singular,  but  is  found  in  the  dual  and  plural.  For 
illustration,  the  first  person  plural  of  the  preterite  of 
the  Gothic  verb  haban,  '  to  have,'  is  habat-dedum, 
which  is  strictly  have-did-we,  equivalent  to  we  did 
have. 

156.  One  further  distinction  also  exists  between 
the  strong  and  the  weak  conjugation.  This  is  in  the 
passive  participle.  In  the  former,  the  suffix  was  -an, 
usually  weakened  into  -en,  as  seen  still  in  driv-en, 
gott-cn;  for  the  latter  it  was  -d  or  -/,  as  seen  in 
love-d,  brough-t. 

157.  These  are  characteristics  which  English  shares 
with  all  the  other  Teutonic  languages.  In  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  the  two  conjugations  above  described,  with 
all  their  distinctive  peculiarities,  were  flourishing,  and 
they  have  lasted  down  to  the  present  time.  But  in 
the  course  of  their  history  great  changes  have  taken 
place  in  their  relative  size  and  importance.  The  most 
obvious  and  the  most  important  fact  is,  that  verbs  of 
the  strong  conjugation  have  in  Modern  English  be- 
come so  few,  and  verbs  of  the  weak  conjugation  so 
numerous,  that  the  former,  when  compared  with  the 
latter,  are  apt  to  seem  like  exceptions  to  the  general 
rule. 

158.  The  specific  changes  that  have  come  over  the 
two  conjugations  may  be  classified  under  the  following 
heads  :  — 

1.  Many  strong  verbs  have  disappeared  altogether. 

2.  Many  strong  verbs  have  passed  over  to  the  weak 
conjugation. 


Conflict  of  the  Conjugations.  307 

3.  A  few  weak  verbs  have  passed  over  to  the  strong 
conjugation. 

4.  A  few  verbs  have  a  double  set  of  forms  —  one 
belonging  to  the  strong  conjugation,  and  one  to  the 
weak. 

5.  A  few  verbs  have  forms  for  different  parts  from 
both  conjugations,  a  preterite,  for  example,  being 
formed  according  to  the  one  and  a  past  participle 
according  to  the  other.  The  details  of  all  these 
changes  will  be  given  in  the  history  of  the  losses  and 
gains  of  the  two  conjugations. 

CONFLICT    OF   THE    STRONG    AND    WEAK    CONJUGATIONS. 

159.  In  the  English  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  period  the 
strong  conjugation  was  divided  into  a  number  of  sub- 
ordinate conjugations,  the  distinctions  between  which 
will  be  given  later.  The  diminution  in  the  number  of 
verbs  belonging  to  the  strong  conjugation  —  either  by 
the  loss  to  the  language  of  the  verbs  themselves,  or  by 
their  transition  to  the  weak  conjugation  —  is  the  mat- 
ter of  most  essential  importance,  bringing  to  light,  as 
it  does,  the  origin  of  the  anomalies  that  are  to  be  found 
in  the  existing  inflection  of  the  verb  in  our  tongue. 

160.  In  the  Anglo-Saxon  there  were  about  three 
hundred  simple  verbs  of  the  strong  conjugation  ;  in 
Modern  English  there  are  less  than  one  hundred.  The 
original  number  has  accordingly  suffered  a  diminution 
of  more  than  two-thirds.  But  even  this  gives  no  ade- 
quate conception  of  the  loss.  As  the  number  of  form- 
ative prefixes  was  far  larger  in  Anglo-Saxon  than  in 


308  English  Language. 

Modern  English,1  the  number  of  compound  verbs 
created  by  the  addition  of  these  prefixes  to  the  simple 
verb  was  necessarily  much  larger.  Thus,  in  Anglo- 
Saxon  more  than  a  dozen  new  verbs  were  formed  by 
the  addition  of  different  prefixes  to  standan.  Of  these, 
Modern  English  has  retained  in  common  use  only  with 
and  under ;  so  that,  from  this  same  verb,  we  now  form 
but  two  verbs,  withstand  and  understand,  instead  of 
the  original  dozen  or  more.  The  disproportion  be- 
tween the  earlier  and  the  later  form  of  the  language, 
in  respect  to  the  number  of  strong  verbs,  is  conse- 
quently much  greater  than  would  be  implied  by  a  loss 
of  two-thirds. 

161.  The  causes  of  this  loss  are  not  hard  to  find. 
Even  during  the  Anglo-Saxon  period  all  verbs  derived 
from  nouns  or  other  verbs  were  inflected  according  to 
the  weak  conjugation.  Such  was  the  case  also  with 
the  few  foreign  verbs  that  were  from  time  to  time  intro- 
duced. On  the  other  hand,  the  strong  conjugation 
received  no  accessions.  Under  any  circumstances, 
therefore,  the  number  of  weak  verbs  would  be  con- 
stantly increasing  ;  while  the  strong,  by  simply  remain- 
ing the  same,  would  become  a  proportionally  smaller 
fraction  of  the  whole.  It  was  an  inevitable  result  of 
this,  that  the  tendency  would  manifest  itself  at  some 
time  to  inflect  all  verbs  in  the  way  that  the  majority 
of  them  were  inflected.  There  is  evidence  that  this 
was  beginning  to  exert  some  influence  in  the  language 
as  it  is  found  written  before  the  Norman  Conquest. 

1  See  page  107. 


Conflict  of  the  Conjugations.  309 

Many  of  the  strong  verbs  have  weak  derivative  verbs 
with  precisely  the  same  meaning  alongside  of  them. 
In  some  cases  also  a  weak  derivative  verb  exists  as  the 
representative  of  a  strong  verb  that  had  gone  out  of 
use  in  Anglo-Saxon,  but  has  been  preserved  in  other 
early  Teutonic  tongues. 

162.  Two  special  agencies  now  came  in  to  hasten 
the  change  in  the  relative  numbers  of  the  two  conjuga- 
tions, and  to  widen  vastly  the  disproportion  already 
beginning  to  exist.  The  Norman  Conquest  made 
French  the  language  of  the  cultivated  classes,  and  left 
the  native  tongue  to  be  used  exclusively  by  the  more 
uneducated  portion  of  the  community.  The  conser- 
vative influence  of  the  literary  language  was  in  conse- 
quence no  longer  felt.  As  a  result,  confusion  speedily 
sprang  up  between  the  two  conjugations  in  the  speech 
of  ignorant  men.  In  process  of  time,  it  became  estab- 
lished by  custom  in  the  speech  of  all.  The  tendency 
to  bring  about  uniformity  at  any  cost *  made  itself  pow- 
erfully felt  in  causing  the  inflection  of  verbs  belonging 
to  the  smaller  class  to  conform  to  that  of  the  larger. 
This,  as  we  have  just  seen,  had  been  manifested  in 
Anglo-Saxon,  but  after  the  Conquest  its  influence  went 
on  for  a  long  while  in  a  constantly  increasing  ratio. 
Hence  men  learned  to  say,  for  example,  glided  for 
glod,  melted  for  molt,  carved  for  car/.  The  influence 
extended  to  verbs  which  still  retain  their  strong  in- 
flections :  and  even  in  the  language  of  the  fourteenth 
century  we  can  find  growed  for  grew,  rised  for  rose, 

1  See  pages  145-147. 


310  EuglisJi  Language. 

smite-*/  for  smote}  and  a  number  of  other  now  unused 
weak  preterites. 

163.  This  agency,  of  itself,  even  if  not  affected  by 
other  influences,  would  have  largely  reduced  the  num- 
ber of  strong  verbs.  But  great  as  it  was,  it  was  not  to 
be  compared  with  the  effect  produced  by  the  influx 
of  foreign  words  from  the  French,  which,  beginning 
toward  the  end  of  the  thirteenth  century,  culminated 
in  revolutionizing  the  vocabulary  in  the  century  fol- 
lowing. All  the  new  verbs  taken  from  that  language 
were  inflected  according  to  the  weak  conjugation ; 
and  with  their  introduction  dropped  out  of  use  a  large 
number  of  Anglo-Saxon  verbs.  Many  of  these  latter 
belonged  to  the  strong  conjugation,  and  their  loss  to 
it  could  never  be  replaced.  The  consequence  was, 
that,  at  the  beginning  of  the  Middle  English  period, 
the  whole  number  of  strong  verbs  in  the  language  had 
become  comparatively  small.  Not  only  was  this  true, 
but  it  seemed  as  if,  under  the  influence  of  the  ten- 
dency to  uniformity,  they  were  about  to  disappear 
altogether. 

164.  'Hie  transition  of  verbs  of  the  strong  conjuga- 
tion to  that  of  the  weak  was  arrested,  however,  as  soon 
as  the  influence  of   literary  models  —  the  great   con- 

1  In  His  garden  growed  swich  a  tree. 

CHA1  CER,  Prol.  to  Wife  of  Bath's  Talc,  line  759. 

Thei  ryseden  eerly  and  worschipeden  before  the  Lord. 

/  Samuel  i.  19  (  Purvey's  Recension). 

These  ben  the  goddis  that  smytiden  Egipt  with  al  veniaunce  in 
deseert.  /  Samuel iv.  8  (Purvey's  Recension). 


Conflict  of  the  Conjugations.  3 1 1 

servative  agency  in  speech  —  began  to  make  itself 
widely  felt.  The  movement  in  that  direction,  which 
had  been  going  on  steadily  since  the  Norman  Con- 
quest, received  its  first  check  in  the  latter  half  of  the 
fourteenth  century  with  the  rise  of  a  native  literature 
of  a  high  order.  From  that  time  the  tendency  of  the 
strong  verbs  to  go  over  to  the  weak  conjugation 
became  less  and  less  conspicuous."  At  the  end  of  the 
Middle  English  period  it  had  ceased  entirely.  On 
the  other  hand,  there  has  been  manifested  during  all 
periods,  a  tendency  on  the  part  of  a  number  of  weak 
verbs  to  assume  strong  forms  —  a  tendency  which,  in 
the  case  of  certain  of  them,  has  resulted  in  their  par- 
tial or  complete  transfer  to  the  strong  conjugation. 

165.  The  history  of  the  English  verb  is,  therefore, 
from  one  point  of  view,  the  history  of  a  conflict  be- 
tween the  weak  and  the  strong  conjugation,  in  which 
the  former  steadily  tended  for  three  centuries  to  become 
the  one  exclusively  in  use.  The  arrest  of  the  move- 
ment in  this  direction,  which  overtook  the  verb  in  the 
fourteenth  century,  was  the  main  cause  that  all  our 
verbs  are  not  now  inflected  according  to  the  weak 
conjugation.  Still  it  was  inevitable  that  the  action 
and  reaction  of  the  two  conjugations  upon  each  other, 
and  the  stoppage  of  the  transition  that  had  been  going 
on  from  the  strong  to  the  weak  inflection,  should  cause 
many  apparently  anomalous  and  irregular  forms  to 
appear  in  the  language.  Accordingly,  a  satisfactory 
account  of  the  later  history  of  the  strong  conjugation 
has  been  made  a  task  of  no  slight  difficulty,  in  conse- 


3  1 2  English  Language. 


quence  of  the  irregularities  that  exist  in  many  verbs, 
and  the  seemingly  capricious  changes  that  have  taken 
place  in  their  inflections  at  various  periods.  In  some 
of  them  there  has  been  only  a  partial  transfer.  They 
have  retained  strong  forms  in  equal  authority  with  the 
weak,  or  even  in  greater.  They  have  retained  strong 
forms  in  poetry,  while  dropping  them  in  prose  ;  or 
they  have  retained  simply  either  a  strong  participial 
form,  or  a  strong  preterite  form.  These  variations  will 
be  all  exhibited  and  explained  in  the  consideration  of 
the  two  conjugations  that  follows. 

The  Strong  Conjugation. 

1 66.  The  variations  and  modifications  that  took 
place  within  the  strong  conjugation  naturally  involve 
the  discussion  of  its  preterites  and  past  participles, 
not  as  distinguished  from  those  of  the  weak  conju- 
gation, but  as  distinguished  from  each  other.  The 
Anglo-Saxon  strong  verbs  may  be  divided  into  seven 
classes,  the  first  six  of  which  include  all  the  verbs  that 
exhibit  vowel-change  proper ;  the  seventh  all  that 
originally  formed  the  preterite  by  reduplication  (16). 
Under  each  of  these  classes  will  be  given  those  verbs 
belonging  to  it  in  Anglo-Saxon  which  have  been  pre- 
served with  their  strong  inflections  in  Modern  English. 
The  principal  parts  given  are,  i,  the  infinitive;  2  and 
3,  the  preterite  singular  (excluding  the  second  person) 
and  the  preterite  plural ;  4,  the  passive  participle. 
Modern  English  forms  are  placed  under  the  Anglo- 
Saxon. 


TJie  Strong  Conjugation. 


3*3 


STRONG    VERBS. CLASS    I. 

167.  In  the  verbs  of  this  class  the  variation  of 
the  radical  vowel  took  place  in  the  following  order  in 
Anglo-Saxon :  — 


1;               a,  1;               1. 

There  were  over  fifty  verbs  belonging  to  the  class  in 
the  early  speech.  Of  this  number  the  following  are 
still  inflected  according  to  the  strong  conjugation  :  — 

1.  (a) bide,                       bidan;  bad,           bidon;       biden. 

-bide  -bode             -bode,  -bided 

2.  bite,                              bitan;  bat,            biton;        biten. 

bite  bit                     bitten,  bit 

3.  cleave  ('to  adhere '),  ell  fan;  claf,           clifon;       clifen. 

cleave  clave                     cleaved 

4.  drive,                             drlfan;  draf,           drifon;       drifen. 

drive  drove                     driven 

5.  ride,                                ridan;  rid,            ridon;        riden. 

ride  rode            rid       ridden,  rid 

6.  rise,                               rlsan;  ras,             rison ;         risen. 

rise  rose                       risen 

7.  shine,                             scinan;  scan,          scinon;      scinen(?) 

shine  shone                      shone 

8.  shrive,                            scrifan;  scraf,          scrifon;      scrifen. 

shrive  shrove                    shriven 

9.  slide,                              slidan;  slad,            slidon;       sliden. 

slide  slid                 slidden,  slid 

10.  smite,                             smitan;  smat,          smiton;      smiten. 

smite  smote                      smitten 

11.  stride,                             stridan;  strad,         stridon;     striden. 

stride  strode                    stridden 


314  English  Language 


12.  strike, 

strican; 

strike 

13.  write, 

writ  an; 

write 

strac,  stricon;  stricen. 

struck  struck,  stricken 

wrat,  writon;  writen. 

ivrote         writ  written 


168.  In  the  Modern  English  forms  the  variation 
of  the  radical  vowel  follows  generally  the  following 
order  :  — 

I;  o  or  \;  i. 

Two  forms  of  the  preterite  —  one  with  the  vowel  o 
representing  the  original  preterite  singular,  the  other 
with  the  vowel  i  of  the  preterite  plural  and  past  parti- 
ciple—  have  been  more  or  less  in  use,  side  by  side, 
since  the  beginning  of  the  Middle  English  period. 
In  general,  however,  there  has  been  a  preference  for 
the  forms  containing  0,  so  much  so  that  many  of  those 
containing  i  now  seem  vulgar.  Still,  Ben  Jonson  in  his 
"  English  Grammar  "  gives  to  the  verbs  bide,  drive, 
rise,  smite,  and  stride  the  preterites  bid,  driv,  vis,  sunt, 
and  strid,  as  well  as  the  forms  now  in  use.  On  the 
other  hand,  he  gave  to  slide  the  preterite  slod  as  well 
as  slid.  Furthermore,  hot  or  bote  was  in  use  up  to  the 
seventeenth  century  as  a  preterite  of  bite. 

169.  Strike  should  be  regularly  inflected  in  Modern 
English  as  stroke  and  striken,  and  these  forms  it  has 
had,  among  others,  during  its  history.  But  in  the 
sixteenth  century,  perhaps  under  the  influence  of 
verbs  of  Class  III.  (190),  its  preterite  became  struck. 
This  form  also  made  its  way  into  the  past  participle, 
and  there  further  developed  the  form  strucken,  occa- 


Strong   Verbs.  —  Class  I.  315 

sionally  used.  The  original  verb  strlcan  did  not 
have  its  present  sense  in  the  early  speech,  but  meant 
'to  go,'  'to  advance.'  This  signification  is  still  found 
in  the  phrase  "  stricken  in  years,"  in  which  the  origi- 
nal participle  continues  to  be  used. 

170.  Four  verbs  of  the  foregoing  list  have  also  de- 
veloped weak  forms  alongside  the  strong  ones.  They 
are  the  following  :  — 


nfinitive. 

Preterite. 

Past  Participle. 

-bide, 

-bided, 

-bided. 

cleave, 

cleaved, 

cleaved. 

shine, 

shined, 

shined. 

shrive, 

shrived, 

shrived. 

171.  Bide  exists  in  Modern  English  mainly  in  the 
compound  abide.  As  a  simple  verb,  it  is  little  used 
outside  of  poetry,  and  is  then  regularly  inflected 
according  to  the  weak  conjugation.  The  compound 
abide,  however,  prefers  the  strong  conjugation,  though 
the  vowel  of  the  preterite  has  made  its  way  into  the 
past  participle,  and  abode  —  earlier  aboden  —  is  the 
common  form  for  the  now  archaic  abidden.  This  last 
form,  too,  occasionally  dropped  its  final  syllable  and 
appeared  as  abid. 

172.  Cleave  is  now  more  generally  inflected  accord- 
ing to  the  weak  conjugation,  and  its  original  may,  per- 
haps, be  properly  considered  the  weak  Anglo-Saxon 
verb  clifian,  rather  than  the  strong  clifan.  Still  the 
point  is  hard,  and  perhaps  impossible  to  determine 
with  certainty,  from  the  fact  that  during  the  whole  of 


3 16  English  Language. 

its  history  its  forms  have  been  constantly  confused  with 
those  of  the  verb  cleave,  '  to  split,'  of  Class  II.  (1S0). 
If  from  the  strong  verb  ctlfan,  we  should  expect  clove 
as  the  preterite,  and  such  it  was  occasionally  in  Early 
English.  The  more  common  form  of  the  two,  how- 
ever, was  clave,  which  has  been  kept  alive  by  its  fre- 
quent occurrence  in  our  version  of  the  Bible. 

173.  As  early  as  the  sixteenth  century  —  perhaps 
much  earlier  —  shine  developed  the  weak  preterite 
and  past  participle  sinned.  It  is  very  common  during 
the  first  part  of  the  Modern  English  period,  and  is 
still  occasionally  met  with  in  literature.  In  the 
modern  language,  shone,  however,  is  the  much  more 
usual  form.  The  past  participle  shinen  has  hardly 
ever  had  a  recognized  existence,  and  its  place  is  now 
taken  by  the  preterite.  Apparently  at  about  the 
same  time  as  shine,  the  verb  shrive  assumed  also 
the  inflections  of  the  weak  conjugation.  From  the 
sixteenth  century,  certainly,  shrived  has  been  fully 
as  common  as  shrove  and  shriven,  and  perhaps 
more  common. 

174.  In  addition  to  the  thirteen  verbs  of  this  class 
that  have  come  down  from  the  Anglo-Saxon  period, 
the  following  four  have  been  added  to  it  since  that 
time  :  — 

Infinitive.  Preterite.  Past  Participle. 

14.  chide,  chid,                      chidden. 

15.  hide,  hid,                         hidden. 

16.  strive,  strove,                   striven. 

17.  thrive,  throve,                   thriven. 


Strong   Verbs.  —  Class  I.  317 

175.  The  first  two  of  these  come  from  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  weak  verbs  :  — 

cidan,  cidde,  cided,  cidd. 

hydan,  hydde,  hyded,  hydd. 

With  the  inflection  chide,  chid;  hide,  hid,  these  two 
verbs  could  be  properly  included  among  the  irregular 
verbs  of  the  weak  conjugation,  which  shorten  the 
vowel  of  the  present  in  the  preterite  (284).  But 
early  in  the  sixteenth  century,  and  probably  somewhat 
before,  both  had  created  a  new  past  participle  by 
adding  to  the  contracted  preterite  the  termination  -en, 
giving  for  that  part  of  the  verb  the  forms  chidden  and 
hidden,  as  well  as  chid  and  hid.  This  properly  brings 
them  under  this  class  of  strong  verbs.  Chide,  after 
the  analogy  of  ride  and  stride,  formed  also  a  preterite 
chode,  perhaps  even  at  an  earlier  date  than  the  parti- 
ciple chidden  ;  but  it  has  not  maintained  itself  as  has 
the  latter.  The  modern  language  has  developed  the 
full  weak  preterite  form  chided  along  with  chid. 

176.  Strive  and  thrive  —  the  first  from  the  Old 
French,  the  second  from  the  Old  Norse  —  came  into 
the  language  during  the  Old  English  period.  Accord- 
ingly, we  should  have  expected  them  to  be  inflected 
according  to  the  weak  conjugation.  But  from  the 
very  outset  strive,  probably  after  the  analogy  of  drive, 
developed  strong  forms  alongside  of  the  weak  ones. 
From  the  thirteenth  century  to  the  present  time  the 
strong  and  weak  preterites  strove  and  strived  can  be 
found  side  by  side,  as  likewise  the  passive  participles 


3 1 8  English  Language. 

striven  and  strived.  The  language  at  present  prefers 
the  strong  forms.  Essentially  the  same  thing  may  be 
said  of  thrive,  in  which,  however,  the  strong  forms 
seem  to  be  the  earlier ;  at  least  they  were  more  in  use. 
177.  Of  the  verbs  originally  belonging  to  this  class 
the  following  have  gone  over  to  the  weak  conjuga- 
tion :  — 

1.  glide  {gUdati).  6.  sneak  (suican). 

2.  gripe  (gripan).  7.  spew  (s/>zwan). 

3.  sigh  (sicari).  8.  twit  (ael-w~itati). 

4.  slip?  (s/if>an).  r  writhe     ■> 


5.     slit?  (sfitan). 


(  wntne    -> 
t  wreathe  J 


Here  also  it  may  be  proper  to  include  the  two  follow- 
ing words,  which  lasted  down  to  the  beginning  of 
Modern  English  :  — 

flite,  from  fit  tan,  '  to  scold.' 

sty,  from  stlgan,  '  to  ascend.' 

178.  To  the  list  of  verbs  which  once  belonged  to 
this  class  is  to  be  added  rive.  This  came  into  the 
language  from  the  Old  Norse,  and  exhibited  in  Early 
English  the  following  inflection  :  — 

Infinitive.  Preterite  Singular.       Preterite  Plural.       Past  Participle. 

rive(n),  rof,  riven,  riven. 

Refore  the  beginning  of  the  Modern  English  period, 
the  verb  had  gone  over  to  the  weak  conjugation,  leav- 
ing behind  it,  however,  in  good  use,  the  strong  past 
participle  riven. 


Strong    Verbs.  —  Class  II. 


319 


179.  Wreathe  seems  to  be  nothing  but  a  variant  of 
writhe,  but  it  was  perhaps  derived  directly  from  the 
substantive  wreath.  The  strong  past  participle  writhen 
is  archaic,  and  the  corresponding  wreathen  belongs  to 
the  language  of  poetry.  Twit,  as  is  seen,  is  a  com- 
pound, of  which  the  final  letter  of  the  prefix  has  been 
retained  with  the  verb.  The  simple  verb  w'ltan,  '  to 
blame,'  'to  find  fault  with,'  which  entered  into  the  com- 
pound, did  not  die  out  till  the  Middle  English  period. 

STRONG   VERBS.  —  CLASS    II. 

180.  In  the  Anglo-Saxon  verbs  of  this  class,  the 
variation  of  the  radical  vowel  was  as  follows  :  — 


eo  -1 


ea, 


u; 


There  were  more  than  fifty  of  these  verbs  in  Anglo- 
Saxon,  of  which  only  the  following  survive  :  — 


1.    choose, 


ceosan;         ceas,        curon;         coren. 
choose  chose  chosen 


2.    cleave  ('to  split'),  cleofan;        cleaf,        clufon;         clofen. 

cleave  clove  cloven 


3-  fly. 

4.  freeze, 

5.  seethe, 

6.  shoot, 


fleogan;  fleah,        flugon;  flogen. 

fly                        flein  flotvn 

freosan;  freas         fruron;  froren. 

freeze                  froze  frozen 

seo'San;  seaft,         sudon;  soden. 


seethe 


shoot 


sod 


shot 


sodden 


sceotan;        sceat         scuton;        scoten. 


shot. 


320  EnglisJi  Language. 

181.  A  very  marked  peculiarity  in  the  history  of 
this  class  is  the  extent  of  the  variation  which  the  forms 
have  undergone.  The  modern  ones,  in  consequence, 
can  hardly  be  said  in  most  cases  to  be  derived  from 
the  ones  found  in  Anglo-Saxon.  The  following  most 
important  of  these  variations  will  be  noted  :  — 

182.  (1)  The  change  of  ;  to  r  (14).  This  took 
place  in  certain  forms  of  the  original  verb,  but  has  now 
been  abandoned.  In  consequence,  coren  has  been 
replaced  by  chosen,  and  froren  by  frozen.  Froren  or 
fro  re  is  still  in  poetic  use,  however,  as  an  adjective.1 
The  same  thing  can  be  said  of  lorn  and  forlorn, 
originally  past  participles  of  leosan  and  forleosan. 
Leosan,  'to  lose,'  a  verb  of  this  class,  which  has  gone 
over  to  the  weak  conjugation,  was  apparently  known  to 
Anglo-Saxon  only  in  compounds.  In  Early  English, 
however,  it  appears,  and  frequently  presents  the  fol- 
lowing inflection  :  — 

lesen;  les,  lore(n);  lor(e)n. 

An  Anglo-Saxon  weak  verb  losian,  losode,  '  to  be 
lost,'  may  have  had  some  influence  on  the  modern 
form,  but  this  is  very  doubtful. 

183.  (2)  The  extent  to  which  the  vowel  of  the 
past  participle  made  its  way  into  the  preterite.     The 

1  My  hart-blood  is  wel  nigh  frorne,  I  feele. 

Spenser,  Skepheards  Calender,  February. 

The  parching  air 
Burns/zwv,  and  cold  performs  the  effect  of  fire. 

MILTON,  Paradise  Lost,  ii.  595. 


Strong   Verbs.  —  Class  II  321 

Early  English  preterites  dies,  cl7]f,fres,  seth,  and  sliet 
have  been  uniformly  given  up  for  forms  containing  o. 
This  tendency  began  to  show  itself  in  the  Old  English 
period.  The  only  exception  to  the  universality  of 
this  rule  is  fly. 

184.  (3)  The  fact  that  two  of  these  words,  choose 
and  shoot,  have  replaced,  with  forms  containing  00,  the 
regularly  descended  forms  of  the  infinitive,  chese(n) 
and  shete(/i).  A  similar  statement  can  be  made  of 
the  originally  strong  verb  of  this  class,  lese(n),  which 
has  given  place  to  lose. 

185.  In  regard  to  individual  words,  cleave,  con- 
stantly confounded  with  cleave  of  Class  I.  (167),  has 
had  likewise  the  preterite  clave.  It  also  developed  in 
the  Old  English  period  the  regular  weak  form  cleaved, 
and  in  the  Middle  English  the  irregular  weak  form 
cleft.  This  latter  is  still  very  common.  Seethe  has 
developed  also  the  weak  form  seethed.  This  appar- 
ently did  not  come  into  much,  if  any,  use  till  the 
Modern  English  period,  but  it  has  now  generally  taken 
the  place  of  the  strong  forms,  which  seem  in  conse- 
quence somewhat  archaic.  Still,  the  word  itself  is 
employed  comparatively  little.  The  forms  of  fleogan, 
'  to  fly,'  were  from  the  outset  confused  with  those  of 
fleohan,  '  to  flee  ' ;  and  this  is  doubtless  one  of  the 
reasons  why  the  principal  parts  of  the  former  verb 
have  had  an  exceptional  development  of  their  own. 
It  remains  to  be  said  that  b"eodan,  '  to  offer,'  of  this 
class,  has  been  confounded  with  biddan,  '  to  ask,'  of 
Class  V.,  as  will  be  pointed  out  later  (217). 


322  English  Language. 

186.  The  following  verbs  of  this  class  have  gone 
over  to  the  weak  conjugation.  The  first  list  contains 
the  words  which  had  originally  eo  in  the  infinitive,  the 
second  Tt. 

1.  brew  (breotvari).  6.  float,  fleet  (Jteotan). 

2.  chew  (ceowan).  7.  lie,  'to  deceive'  (Jeogari). 

3.  creep  (creopan).  8.  lose  (-leosan). 

4.  crowd  (creodan).  9.  rue  (hreowari). 

5.  flee  (jlt'on).  IO.  sprout  (spreotan,  spr  titan). 

11.  bow  (Jmgan).  14.   shove  (scufan). 

12.  brook  (brucari).  15.    suck?  (sucan). 

13.  rout,  'to  snore'  (Jirutan).      16.    sup?  (supan). 

To  these  may  be  added  the  following  dialectic  or  archaic 
words,  which  appear  still  occasionally  in  the  literary 
speech  :  — 

dree,  from  dreogan,  '  to  suffer.' 

lout,  from  lutan, '  to  bow.' 1 

187.  The  Anglo-Saxon  verb  fleotan  was  regularly 
represented  in  Middle  English  by  the  form  flete,  and 
the  form  flotc,  though  occurring,  does  not  occur  often. 
The  spelling  of  the  Modern  English  verb  may  have 
been  affected  by  the  substantive  flota,  '  a  vessel,' 
though  this  is  doubtful.  Creep,  another  one  of  these 
verbs,  has  the  strong  preterite  and  participle  erope  and 
cropen  in  occasional  use  early  in  the  Modern  English 

1  For  example,  the  Scotch  phrase,  To  dree  one's  weird,  "  to  endure 
one's  fate."     Also 

He  faire  the  knight  saluted,  touting  low. 

SPENSER,  Faerie  Queene,  I.  i.  30. 


Strong   Verbs.  —  Class  III.  323 

period,  and  dialectically  it  continues  to  exist  until  this 
day. 

188.  Some  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  verbs  of  this  class 
have  weak  forms  alongside  of  the  strong  ones,  and 
from  either  one  of  these  the  modern  weak  verb  may 
have  been  derived.  Thus  reek  may  have  descended 
from  the  strong  verb  reocan,  '  to  smoke,  exhale,'  or 
from  the  weak  recan,  with  the  same  meaning.  One 
of  the  strong  verbs  of  this  class,  dufan,  did  not  per- 
petuate itself;  but  the  weak  collateral  verb  dyfan 
survives  in  the  word  dive.  This,  in  the  language  of 
common  life,  has  of  late  exhibited  a  tendency  to  as- 
sume in  the  preterite  the  form  dove,  after  the  analogy 
of  drive  of  Class  I.  From  colloquial  speech  it  has  nat- 
urally now  and  then  made  its  way  into  literature,  as,  for 
example  :  — 

Straight  into  the  river  Kwasind 
Plunged  as  if  he  were  an  otter, 
Dove  as  if  he  were  a  beaver. 
Longfellow,  Hiawatha,  vii.  (original  edition). 

STRONG   VERBS.  —  CLASS    III. 

189.  The  verbs  in  this  class  fall  into  three  divisions 
according  to  the  following  schemes  of  vowel-varia- 
tion :  — 

1.  i;  a(o),  u;  u. 

2.  e  ;  ea,  u;  o. 

3.  eo;  ea,  u;  o. 

Besides   these   there  were   a  few  verbs  in  Anglo- 


324 


English  Language. 


Saxon  which  underwent  special  variations  of  their  own. 
These  are  indicated  in  the  following  scheme  :  — 


e; 

se, 

u; 

o. 

i; 

se, 

u; 

u. 

u; 

ea, 

u; 

190.  There  were  between  seventy-five  and  eighty 
verbs  in  the  whole  class.  The  following  twenty-two 
found  in  Modern  English  represent  the  members  of 
the  first  subdivision  :  — 


I. 

bind, 

bindan; 

band, 

bundon; 

bunden. 

bind 

bound 

bound 

2. 

climb, 

climban; 

clamb, 

clumbon ; 

clumben. 

climb 

clomb 

clomb 

3- 

cling,1 

clingan; 

clang, 

clungon; 

clungen. 

cling 

clung 

clung 

4- 

drink, 

drincan; 

dranc, 

druncon; 

druncen. 

drink 

drank 

drunk 

drunk 

5- 

find, 

findan ; 

fand, 

fundon ; 

funden. 

find 

foum 

/ 

found 

6. 

-gin, 

-gin  nan; 

-gan, 

-gunnon; 

-gun nen. 

-gin 

■gan 

-gun 

-gun 

7- 

grind, 

grindan; 

grand, 

grundon; 

grunden. 

grind 

ground 

ground 

8. 

run, 

rinnan; 

ran, 

111 1111  on; 

ruiinen. 

run 

ran 

run 

9- 

shrink, 

scrincan; 

scranc, 

scruncon; 

scruncen. 

shrink 

shrank 

shrunk 

shrunk 

0. 

sing, 

singan; 

sang, 

sungon; 

sungen. 

sing 

sang 

sung 

sung 

1  The  Anglo-Saxon  clingan  meant  'to  shrink,' and  win  nan  'to 

labor.' 


Strong   Verbs.  —  Class  III. 


325 


1 1. 

sink, 

sincan; 

sane, 

suncon ; 

suncen. 

sink 

sank 

sunk 

sunk 

12. 

sling, 

slingan; 
sling 

slang, 

si U  Jig 

slungon ; 

slungen. 

slung 

13- 

slink, 

slincan; 

slink 

slanc, 
stank 

sluncon; 

slunk 

sluncen. 
slunk 

14. 

spin, 

spinnan; 
spin 

span, 

spun 

spunnon; 

spunnen. 
spun 

«5- 

spring, 

springan; 
spring 

sprang, 
sprang 

sprungon ; 
sprung 

sprungen. 
sprung 

16. 

sting, 

stingan; 
sting 

stang, 

stung 

stungon; 

stun  gen. 
slung 

17- 

stink, 

stincan; 
stink 

stanc, 
stank 

stuncon; 
stunk 

stuncen. 
stunk 

18. 

swim, 

swimman; 

swam, 

swummon ; 

swum  men 

swim 

sivam 

swum 

swum 

19. 

swing, 

swingan; 
swing 

swang,            swungon ; 
swung 

swungen. 
swung 

20. 

win,1 

winnan; 

wan, 

wunnon; 

wunnen. 

win 

won 

won 

21. 

wind, 

vvindan; 

wand, 

wundon; 

wunden. 

wind 

»  wound 

wound 

22. 

wring, 

wringan ; 
wring 

wrang,            wrungon; 
wrung 

wrungen. 
zurung 

The  two  following  are  the  sole  representatives  now 
existing  of  the  second  and  third  subdivisions  :  — 


23.    help, 

helpan; 
help 

healp,             hulpon; 
holp 

holpen. 
holpen 

24.    fight, 

feohtan ; 
fight 

feaht,              fuhton; 

fought 

fohten. 
fought 

1  See  note,  preceding  page. 


326  English  Language. 

191.  In  Modern  English  the  variation  of  the  radi- 
cal vowel  has  generally  been  according  to  the  following 
scheme  :  — 

i ;  a  or  u ;  u. 

But  besides  the  cases  of  individual  verbs  to  be  con- 
sidered separately,  those  which  ended  in  -nd — bind, 
find,  grind,  and  wind —  have  invariably  lengthened  in 
the  literary  language  the  short  vowel  of  the  preterite 
and  past  participle  into  the  diphthong  ou.  These  same 
verbs  have  likewise  lengthened  the  vowel  of  the  infini- 
tive and  the  present  tense,  which  is  long  only  by  po- 
sition, into  the  diphthongal  sound  of  i,  as  has  also 
climb. 

192.  This  class  of  strong  verbs  received  during  the 
Old  English  period  the  two  verbs  now  inflected  as 
follows  :. — 

25.  fling;  flung;  flung. 

26.  ring;  rang  or  rung;  rung. 

193.  Fling  is  a  word  that  came  into  our  tongue 
from  the  Norse.  Since  its  introduction  it  has  never 
been  inflected  otherwise  than  according  to  the  strong 
conjugation.  In  Early  English  it  had  also  the  preterite 
flang.  Ring  is  from  the  weak  Anglo-Saxon  verb 
hringan,  hringde.  Like  fling,  it  doubtless  assumed  the 
strong  inflection  after  the  analogy  of  sing,  spring,  and 
similar  words.  It  does  not  appear  to  have  shown 
weak  forms  after  the  Anglo-Saxon  period. 

194.  During  the  Modern  English  period  strong  in- 
flections have  been  developed  by  three  verbs,  which 


Strong  Verbs.  —  Class  III  327 

may  be  assigned  most  appropriately  to  this  class.    They 
are  the  following  :  — 


27. 

dig; 

dug; 

dug. 

28. 

stick ; 

stuck ; 

stuck. 

29. 

string; 

strung; 

strung 

195.  Of  these  words  dig  is  of  somewhat  uncertain 
origin,  though  the  derivation  can  perhaps  be  ascribed 
reasonably,  if  remotely,  to  Anglo-Saxon  dician,  dicode, 
'  to  make  a  dike,  mound,  or  ditch.'  In  the  form  in 
which  it  now  appears  it  does  not  seem,  however,  to 
have  been  used  before  the  fourteenth  century.  It  had 
then,  and  for  several  centuries  following,  the  weak 
preterite  and  past  participle  digged.  The  strong  form, 
dug,  did  not  become  common,  if,  indeed,  it  was  known 
at  all,  until  the  eighteenth  century.  It  cannot  be 
found  in  the  authorized  version  of  the  Bible,  in  Shak- 
speare,  or  in  the  poetry  of  Milton.  In  all  of  these  the 
preterite  was  digged.  This  latter  form  has  now  become 
archaic. 

196.  Stick  is  derived  directly  from  the  weak  Anglo- 
Saxon  verb  stician,  sticode,  having  the  meaning  of  '  to 
adhere.'  The  form  stiked  for  the  preterite  and  past 
participle  is  common  in  the  literary  language  of  the 
fourteenth  century ;  but,  in  the  sixteenth,  stuck  had 
become  instead  the  regular  form.  The  transition 
doubtless  took  place  during  the  Middle  English  period. 
There  was  an  Early  English  strong  verb,  steken,  'to 
pierce,'  which  has  also  a  right  to  be  considered  as 
one  of  the  originals  of  this  verb.  It  was  inflected  as 
follows  :  — 


328  English  Language. 

steke(n);  stale,  stok;  steken,  stoken. 

This,  which  would  strictly  belong  to  Class  V.,  had  no 
original  in  Anglo-Saxon. 

197.  String  is  a  verb  that  has  apparently  been 
formed  from  the  noun  'string,'  in  Anglo-Saxon,  streng. 
It  does  not  appear  to  have  been  known  before  the 
sixteenth  century,  though  it  would  be  venturesome  to 
assert  that  it  had  not  a  much  earlier  existence.  If  the 
verb  is  recent,  as  seems  most  probable,  it  is  likely  that 
from  the  beginning  of  its  formation  it  was  inflected 
string,  strung,  strung,  according  to  the  strong  conju- 
gation, after  the  analogy  of  siving,  swung;  sting,  stung; 
and  others. 

198.  Of  the  verbs  in  the  foregoing  list,  two  — 
climb  and  help  —  have  regularly  gone  over  to  the  weak 
conjugation,  and  form  the  preterites  and  past  partici- 
ples climbed and  helped.  Their  strong  forms  are  either 
archaic,  poetic,  or  dialectic.  The  transition  took  place 
during  the  Middle  English  period.  What,  on  the 
whole,  were  the  common  early  strong  forms  for  climb 
were  as  follows  :  — 

climbe(n);         clamb,  clombe(n);  clumben. 

These  are  responsible  for  several  of  the  forms  still  in 
use  in  dialects  and  among  the  uneducated. 

199.  Dingt  a  word  but  now  little  used,  was  not 
known  to  Anglo-Saxon  at  all,  but  in  Early  English 
appeared  with  the  following  inflection:  — 

dinge(n);  <-lang,  dungen;  dungen. 


Strong   Verbs.  —  Class  III.  329 

It  now  follows  usually  the  weak  conjugation,  but  also 
exhibits  the  strong  preterite  and  past  participle  dung. 
200.    The  Early  English  inflection  of  run  was  as 
follows  :  — 


rinne(n)  -i  ran ->  runnen  •>  runnen 

renne(n)  /  '  rem  J  '  ronnen i  ronnen 


In  the  case  of  this  verb  the  vowel  of  the  preterite 
plural  and  past  participle  has  made  its  way  into  the 
infinitive  and  present  tense.  This  took  place  during 
the  Middle  English  period.  The  preterite  run  was 
at  one  time  found  not  unfrequently  in  literature,  and 
is  still  in  use  among  the  uneducated  (365). 

201.  The  Anglo-Saxon  strong  verb  winrfan,  '  to 
move  in  a  winding  course,'  has  been  transmitted  in 
this  sense  to  Modern  English.  But  there  is  another 
English  verb,  wind,  '  to  sound  by  blowing,'  derived 
from  the  noun  '  wind.'  This  should  strictly  be  in- 
flected according  to  the  weak  conjugation,  and  in 
certain  senses  is  so.  But  the  forms  of  the  two  verbs 
have  to  some  extent  acted  upon  each  other.  In 
consequence,  the  first  has  occasionally  been  inflected 
according  to  the  weak  conjugation  ;  but  more  often 
the  second  according  to  the  strong.  Thus,  such  a 
usage  as  "  the  way  winded  over  the  hill  "  can  some- 
times be  met  with  ;  while  the  corresponding  usage 
"  he  wound  his  horn  "  is  even  common.  It  is  further 
to  be  added  that  in  the  sense  just  given,  the  derivative 
verb  luind  not  only  assumes  at  times  the  inflection 
of  the  strong  verb,  but  invariably  its  pronunciation ; 


330  English  Language. 

whereas  in  other  of  its  significations,  as  when  we  say 
"the  horse  is  winded,"  the  verb  has  not  only  the 
weak  form  invariably,  but  is  pronounced  not  wind 
but  wind. 

202.  There  is  one  peculiarity  that  marks  in  partic- 
ular the  verbs  of  this  class.  This  is  that  in  ordinary 
usage  the  original  ending  -en  of  the  past  participle 
has  been  dropped  from  all  of  them.  It  is  true  that  in 
poetry,  and  in  certain  special  phrases,  bounden,  drunken, 
shrunken,  sunken,  and  foughten  occasionally  appear. 
But  these,  when  found,  have  almost  invariably  lost  the 
participial  sense,  and  are  simply  adjectives.  This  is 
the  only  class  of  strong  verbs  which  is  characterized 
throughout  by  this  peculiarity.  Holpen,  from  help, 
would  indeed  be  strictly  an  exception  to  this  rule ; 
but  here  again  the  strong  forms  of  this  verb  belong 
to  poetry. 

203.  Another  thing  noticeable  about  this  class  is 
that  with  the  exception  of  beornan,  'to  burn,' — which 
had  a  peculiar  history  of  its  own,  —  not  one  of  the 
verbs  of  the  first  subdivision  (189)  ever  went  entirely 
over  to  tin.'  weak  conjugation.  On  the  other  hand,  all 
the  verbs  that  survived  of  the  other  subdivisions  did 
so  with  the  exceptions  of  help  and  fight.  The  follow- 
ing are  the  verbs  which  in  Modern  English  have  aban- 
doned their  strong  forms  :  — 


I. 

bell,  '  tn  roar'  (bellari). 

5.   yell  (giellari). 

2. 

delve  (delfan). 

6.    yelp  (gielpan ). 

3- 

melt  (nieltan). 

7.    yield  (gieldan). 

4- 

swell  (nveUari). 

Strong   Verbs.  —  Class  IV.  331 

8.  bark  (beorcan).  II.    smart  {smeortan). 

9.  burn  (beornari).  12.   starve  (steorfan). 

ID.    carve  (ceorfan).  13.    swerve  ?  (szueorfan,'  to  polish'). 

14.    warp  (weorpan). 

15.  braid  (bregdan).  18.    spurn  (spurnan). 

16.  burst  (berstan).  19.    thresh  (perscati). 

17.  mourn  (////email). 

204.  One  of  these  verbs,  j/w//,  still  shows  frequently 
the  strong  past  participle  swollen,  but  in  general  that 
form  is  used  as  an  adjective.  Bursten,  carven,  and 
molten  are  also  adjectives  which  owe  their  existence 
to  the  original  past  participles  of  burst,  carve,  and 
melt,  and  at  times  are  treated  as  participles  in  poetry. 
Starven,  'starved,'  and  yobten,  'yielded,'  lasted  down 
also  to  the  beginning  of  the  Modern  English  period. 
In  truth,  the  forms  of  several  of  these  verbs  occasion- 
ally appear  in  the  poetry  of  the  early  period  of  Modern 
English,  not  only  because  the  language  of  poetry  nat- 
urally preserves  archaic  forms,  but  because  there  was 
at  that  time  a  constant  effort  to  revive  forms  gone  out 
of  ordinary  use.  For  example,  molt,  an  obsolete  pret- 
erite, is  used  by  Sackville  in  the  following  lines  in  the 
"  Induction  to  the  Mirror  for  Magistrates  "  :  — 

My  heart  so  molt  to  see  his  grief  so  great 
As  feelingly,  methought,  it  dropt  away. 

STRONG    VERBS. CLASS    IV. 

205.  In  Anglo-Saxon  the  vowel-variation  was  gen- 
erally according  to  the  following  scheme  :  — 

e  ;  ae,  a?  ;  o. 


332 


Engl  is  Ii  Language. 


This  class   contained  in  the    early  speech  about  ten 
verbs.     The  following  survive  :  — 


I. 

bear, 

beran  ; 

beer,         b.eron  ; 

boren. 

bear 

bore 

bom(e) 

2. 

break, 

brecan; 

bra;c,       brKCon ; 

brocen. 

break 

broke 

broke(n) 

3- 

come, 

cuman  ; 

com,        comon ; 

cumen. 

come 

came 

come 

4- 

shear, 

scieran  ; 

scear,       scearon  ; 

scoren. 

shear 

shore 

shorn 

5- 

steal, 

stelan  ; 

steel,        stelon ; 

stolen. 

steal 

stole 

stolen 

6. 

tear, 

teran  ; 

teer,          tieron  ; 

toren. 

tear 

lore 

torn 

206.  With  the  exception  of  c  it  man  —  which  is  pecul- 
iarly irregular  —  the  short  vowel  of  the  infinitive  and 
the  present  tense  of  all  these  verbs  has  been  length- 
ened in  their  Modern  English  representatives.  The 
Early  English  preterites  were  based  upon  their  cor- 
responding Anglo-Saxon  forms,  and  all  exhibited  the 
vowel  (i.  But  during  the  Middle  English  period - 
and  in  the  case  of  some  verbs  perhaps  earlier  —  this 
vowel  was  displaced  by  the  o  of  the  past  participle. 
Hence  the  earlier  preterites  bare,  brake,  s//ar(e), 
stair,  and  tare  gave  way  to  the  forms  now  existing. 
But  as  certain  of  them  —  bare,  brake,  and  tare  par- 
ticularly—  maintained  themselves  in  literature,  at  the 
beginning  of  the  Modern  English  period,  alongside 
of  bore,  broke,  and  tore,  they  have  never  fallen  into 


Strong    Verbs.  —  Class  IV.  333 

absolute  disuse.  They  are  met  with  occasionally, 
particularly  in  poetry,  and  in  any  style  intentionally 
made  archaic. 

207.  The  past  participles  of  these  verbs  generally 
retain  the  final  -n  in  Modern  English.  In  colloquial 
usage,  however,  broke  and  stole  are  found  alongside 
of  broken  and  stolen,  and  these  abbreviated  forms 
have  occasionally  made  their  appearance  in  literature. 

208.  Come  has  differed  from  the  other  verbs  of 
this  class  during  the  whole  period  of  its  history.  The 
preterite  com(e)  was  preserved  in  the  South,  but  was 
early  replaced  by  cam{e)  in  the  North.  This  latter 
form  made  its  way  into  the  Midland.  In  the  litera- 
ture of  the  beginning  of  the  Middle  English  period 
it  is  found  constantly  in  the  Wycliffite  version  of  the 
Scriptures,  and  not  unfrequently  in  Chaucer,  Gower, 
and  Langland.  After  the  fourteenth  century  it  became 
the  established  form,  though  the  older  preterite  come 
is  still  in  use  among  the  uneducated,  and  can  some- 
times be  found  somewhat  late  in  the  literary  speech. 
The  past  participle  of  this  verb  retained  the  final  -;/ 
for  a  long  period.  Co  men,  in  fact,  did  not  die  out 
till  the  seventeenth  century. 

209.  Not  one  of  these  verbs  has  gone  completely 
over  to  the  weak  conjugation.  Shear  has  developed 
the  weak  preterite  and  participle,  sheared;  but  the 
strong  forms  still  survive.  If  sheared  is  more  common 
in  the  preterite  than  shore,  in  the  past  participle  shorn 
is  more  common  than  sheared. 

210.  In  addition  to  the  six  original  verbs  of  this 


334  English  Language. 

class  that  have  survived,  Modern  English  has  received 
another.  This  is  wear,  which  is  derived  from  the 
Anglo-Saxon  weak  verb  werian ;  werede ;  wered. 
Down  to  the  fifteenth  century  certainly,  and,  perhaps, 
to  the  sixteenth,  it  was  inflected  as  follows  :  — 

weren,  werede,  wered. 

So  it  always  appears  in  Chaucer.  But  during  the 
latter  part  of  the  Middle  English  period,  it  abandoned 
its  strictly  correct  forms  and  replaced  them  by  those 
of  the  strong  conjugation,  doubtless  after  the  analogy 
of  words  like  bear  and  tear.  At  the  beginning  of  the 
Modern  English  period,  it  regularly  presented  the 
following  as  its  principal  parts  :  — 

7.     wear;  ware  or  wore;  worn. 

STRONG    VERBS.  —  CLASS   V. 

211.  This  class  is  closely  allied  to  the  preceding, 
and  is  sometimes  joined  with  it.  The  vowel-change  is 
the  same  with  the  exception  of  the  past  participle,  and 
is,  in  general,  according  to  the  following  scheme  :  — 

c;  se,  ae;  e. 

Four  verbs,  however,  that  have  survived  have  i  in 
the  infinitive  and  present  tense,  and  there  are  other 
variations  the  origin  of  which  it  is  unnecessary  to  enter 
into  here. 

212.  Nearly  thirty  verbs  belonged  to  this  class  in 
Anglo  Saxon.     Of  these  the  following  survive  :  — 


Strong  Verbs.  —  Class  V. 


335 


I. 

bid, 

biddan; 

bred, 

bredon; 

beden. 

bid 

bad{e),  bid 

bidden,  bid 

2. 

eat, 

etan; 

ret, 

reton; 

eten. 

eat 

ate,  eat 

eaten,  eat 

3- 

get, 

gietan; 

get 

geat, 

got 

geaton; 

gieten. 
gotten,  got 

4- 

give, 

giefan; 

give 

geaf, 

gave 

geafon ; 

giefen. 
given 

5- 

lie, 

began; 
lie 

keg. 

lay 

lregon; 

legen. 
lain 

6. 

see, 

seon ; 
see 

seah, 

sazv 

sawon; 

sewen. 
seen 

7- 

sit, 

sittan; 
sit 

sret, 

sat 

sreton ; 

seten. 
sat 

8. 

speak, 

specan; 1 

speak 

spree, 

spoke 

sprecon; 

specen. 
spoken 

9- 

tread, 

tredan; 

trred, 

trredon; 

treden. 

tread 

trod(e) 

trodden 

:o. 

weave, 

wefan; 
■weave 

wref, 

wove 

wrefon ; 

wefen. 

woven 

213.  In  the  history  of  these  words  it  will  be  ob- 
served that  the  normal  preterites  gat,  spake,  trad,  and 
waf  have  been  displaced  in  Modern  English  by  got, 
spoke,  trod(e),  and  wove.  The  corresponding  parti- 
ciples have  also  become  gotten  or  got,  spoken,  trodden, 
and  woven.  In  all  these  cases  the  forms  with  0  had 
made  their  appearance  in  the  language  as  early  as  the 
fourteenth  century.  In  the  writings  of  that  time  even 
3 oven  is  a  past  participle  of 31've,  'give,'  and  sometimes 

1  Specan  is  late  Anglo-Saxon  ;  the  earlier  form  was  sprecan. 


336  English  Language. 

can  be  found  as  a  preterite  plural,  though  its  use  was 
not  perpetuated  in  either  case. 

214.  The  origin  of  these  forms  is  somewhat  uncer- 
tain. It  is  probable  that  o  was  first  introduced  into 
the  past  participle  after  the  analogy  of  the  participles 
of  the  preceding  class,  with  which  this  one  is  so  closely 
connected.  From  the  past  participle  these  forms  seem 
then  to  have  made  their  way  into  the  preterite.  After 
the  fourteenth  century  they  became  common,  and  were 
finally  regarded  as  the  standard  forms.  Still  gat  and 
spake  have  never  died  out,  though  they  are  now 
archaic. 

215.  Certain  of  the  verbs  of  this  class  have  had  a 
somewhat  peculiar  history.  The  strong  intransitive 
verb  lie  has  been  constantly  confused  through  all  the 
periods  of  Modern  English  with  the  weak  transitive 
verb  lay,  and  this  error  exhibits  itself  occasionally  in 
literature.1  The  same  is  true,  at  least  as  regards  the 
language  of  the  uneducated,  of  the  strong  verb  sit, 
which  is  frequently  confounded  with  the  weak  verb  set. 
More  remarkable,  perhaps,  than  either  is  see,  which  in 
the  language  of  low  life  has  the  same  form  see  as  its 
preterite,   instead  of  saw.      This   goes   back   to    the 


1  E.g.  But  let  not  a  man  trust  his  victorie  over  his  nature  too 
far  re ;  for  nature  will  lay  buried  a  great  time,  and  yet  revive  upon 
the  occasion  of  temptation.  —  Bacon,  Essays  {Of  Nature  in  Man). 

Thou  .  .  .  send'st  him  shivering  in  thy  playful  spray 

And  dashest  him  again  to  earth  :  — ■  there  let  him  lay. 

BYRON,  Childe  Harold,  iv.  st.  180. 


Strong   Verbs.  —  Class    V.  337 

Middle  English  period,  and  may  be  much  earlier.     It 
has  sometimes  made  its  way  into  literature.1 

216.  In  the  written  language,  the  past  participle 
usually  retains  the  original  final  -//,  and  invariably  so  in 
the  case  of  give,  lie,  and  see.  In  colloquial  speech  this 
-n  is  sometimes  dropped.  The  abbreviated  participial 
forms  bid,  eat,  spoke,  trod,  and  wove  have  been  used 
with  varying  degrees  of  frequency  at  different  periods 
of  Modern  English  •  and,  generally  speaking,  the 
shorter  form  got  has  been  much  more  common,  both 
in  speech  and  in  writing,  than  the  fuller  gotten.  The 
opposite  is  the  fact,  however,  in  the  case  of  the  com- 
pound forget,  where  forgotten  is  preferred  to  forgot. 
The  preterite  has  sometimes  made  its  way  into  the 
past  participle.  Bade  so  used  is  not  uncommon,  and 
sat  or  sate  is  now  the  regular  form  for  which  sitten  — 
analogous  to  bidden  —  was  once  employed. 

217.  Bid  really  represents  two  Anglo-Saxon  strong 
verbs  which  have  been  hopelessly  confused  both  as 
regards  inflection  and  meaning.  The  forms  here  found 
are,  on  the  whole,  the  nearest  to  biddan,  which  means 
'  to  ask,  invite,  pray,'  and  in  Early  English  would  be 
represented  by  the  following  inflection  :  — 

bidde(n);  bad,  beden;  beden. 

1  This  page  ...  of  very  speciall  frendshippe  se  his  tyme  to  set 
him  forwarde.  —  Sir  Thomas  More,  Richard  HI.,  page  519. 

Who  sec  a  master  of  mine?  —  GREENE,  George-a- Greene,  ed. 
1 861,  page  262. 

About  noon  set  sail,  in  our  way  I  see  many  barks  and  masts.  — 
PEPYS'S  Diary,  April  8,  1660. 

Be  sure  you  say  you  see  him  hurt  himself. —  PORTER,  The  Vil- 
lain, ed.  1670,  page  67. 


3  3<c>  English  Language. 

The  other  verb  is  beodan,  which  belongs  to  Class 
II.  (185).  It  means  'to  offer,  announce,  command,' 
and  in  Anglo-Saxon  and  Early  English  presents  prop- 
erly the  following  forms  :  — 

beodan;  bead,  budon;  boden. 

bede(n);  lied,  buden;  boden. 

The  forms  of  these  verbs  were  early  confounded  with 
one  another,  and  to  a  great  extent  used  interchange- 
ably. Confusion  of  meaning  naturally  followed  con- 
fusion of  form.  A  striking  result  of  this  is  seen  in 
the  compound  forbid,  which  represents,  so  far  as 
meaning  is  concerned,  the  Anglo-Saxon  for-blodan, 
while  its  forms  are  mainly  due  to  biddan. 

218.  Weave  was  at  one  period  frequently  inflected 
according  to  the  weak  conjugation,  and  even  now  it 
has  at  times  the  preterite  and  past  participle  weaved. 
On  the  other  hand,  to  this  class  may  be  assigned  the 
word  spit,  on  the  strength  of  an  inflection  it  has  occa- 
sionally had.  Strictly  it  is  a  weak  verb  (274)  and 
based  upon  a  weak  original ;  yet  during  its  history  it 
has  been  sometimes  inflected  as  follows  :  — 

11.   spit;  spat;  spitten. 

219.  To  this  class  belong  also  two  verbs,  one  of 
which  was  originally  defective,  the  other  has  become 
so.  The  first  of  these  is  wesan,  which  has  furnished 
the  preterite  of  the  substantive  verb  (442).  The  sec- 
ond had  a  full  inflection  in  Anglo-Saxon.  Its  prin- 
cipal parts  were  as  follows  :  — 

cwt'iian;  cwcc'ii,     cwanlon;  cwedcn. 


Strong   Verbs.  —  Class    VI.  #  339 

In  the  fourteenth  century  it  was  rare  that  any  other 
part  of  this  verb  beside  the  preterite  was  used  ;  but 
the  preterite  itself  was  then  very  common.  By  that 
time  the  forms  with  e,  cwed  and  cweden,  had  been 
generally  abandoned  for  those  with  0.  The  verb  then 
appeared  indifferently  with  the  consonant  of  the 
singular  or  of  the  plural,  as  quoth  or  quod;  but 
the  former  became  the  prevalent  form  before  the 
end  of  the  Middle  English  period.  The  compound 
be-queathe  has  retained  the  full  verbal  inflection,  but 
has  passed  entirely  over  to  the  weak  conjugation. 
The  same  change  characterizes  fret,  'to  chafe,  dis- 
turb,' which  is  a  compound  of  eat,  and  had  for  its 
first  sense  '  to  devour.'  The  Anglo-Saxon  verb  is 
f retail ;  and  the  old  strong  past  participle  fretten 
lasted  down  to  the  Modern  English  period. 

220.  The  following  verbs  originally  belonging  to 
this  class  have  gone  over  to  the  weak  conjugation  :  — 

1.  fret  (fretan).  4.    be-queathe  (de-nvefian). 

2.  knead  (cnedan).  5.    weigh  (wegan). 

3.  mete  (metan).  6.    wreak  (wrecari). 

STRONG    VERKS. —  CLASS    VI. 

221.  In  the  verbs  of  this  class  the  following  is  the 
regular  variation  of  the  radical  vowel  in  Anglo-Saxon  :  — 

a;  5,  6;  a. 

There  were  over  thirty  verbs  belonging  to  this  class 
in  the  early  tongue.  The  following  survive  with  the 
strong  inflection :  — 


34Q 


English  L  a  nguagc. 


I. 

draw, 

dragan; 

drog,         drogon; 

dragen. 

draw 

drew 

drawn 

2. 

heave, 

hebban; 

hof,           hofon; 

hafen. 

heave 

hove 

hove 

3- 

(for)sake, 

sacan ; 

soc,           socon; 

sacen. 

-sake 

-sook 

-saken 

4- 

shake, 

scacan ; 

scoc,          scocon; 

scacen. 

shake 

shook 

shaken 

5- 

slay, 

slean ; 

sloh,          slogon; 

slagen. 

slay 

slew 

slain 

6. 

stand, 

standan; 

stod,           stodon; 

standen. 

stand 

stood 

stood 

7- 

swear, 

swerian; 

swor,          sworon ; 

sworen. 

swear 

swore 

sworn 

8. 

take, 

tacan; 

toe,             tocon; 

tacen. 

take 

took 

taken 

9- 

wake, 

-wacan ; 

woe,          wocon ; 

wacen. 

wake 

woke 

ivoke 

222.  To  this  class  may  be  best  referred  two  verbs 
which  in  Modern  English  are  inflected  according  to 
the  strong  conjugation  as  well  as  the  weak.  They 
are  the  following  :  — 


10.  reeve; 

11.  stave; 


rove; 
stove; 


rove, 
stove. 


The  first  of  these  is  a  technical  naval  word.  Its 
derivation  is  uncertain,  and  it  probably  belongs  ex- 
clusively to  Modern  English.  The  second,  slave,  is 
pretty  certainly  a  modern  verb,  and  is  doubtless  formed 
directly  from   the   substantive   stave  or  staff.      Before 


Strong   Verbs.  —  Class    VI.  341 

the  present  century,  certainly,  the  weak  form  staved 
was  much  more  common  than  the  corresponding  form 
stove. 

223.  In  a  number  of  verbs  of  this  class  the  preterite 
was  used  as  the  past  participle  in  the  early  period  of 
Modern  English.  Forsook,  shook,  and  took,  with  its 
compounds  mistook  and  undertook,  were  at  one  time 
very  commonly  used  with  have  to  form  the  perfect 
tense  (314).  In  the  case  of  stand  this  has  become 
the  established  rule  with  the  preterite  stood,  which 
has  supplanted  entirely  the  etymologically  correct 
form  stonden.  It  will  be  further  noticed  that  this 
verb  stand  loses  in  the  preterite  its  n. 

224.  A  statement  somewhat  similar  about  the  per- 
manent intrusion  of  the  preterite  into  the  past  parti- 
ciple can  be  made  of  the  verb  ivake,  which  has  lost  its 
original  past  participle  waken.  The  weak  form  waked 
is  more  common,  however,  in  that  part  of  the  verb 
than  the  strong  preterite  form  woke.  But  this  is  not 
true  of  the  compound  awake,  in  which  the  participle 
awoke,  taken  from  the  preterite,  stands  side  by  side 
in  usage  with  awaked.  In  this  verb  the  original  parti- 
ciple awaken  has  disappeared  from  the  inflection,  and, 
with  its  final  -n  dropped,  survives  now  only  as  an 
adjective. 

225.  In  the  case  of  two  of  these  verbs,  draw  and 
slay,  the  original  preterites  droh,  drow,  and  sloh,  slow, 
have  been  replaced  by  forms  with  the  vowel  e.  These 
made  their  appearance  in  the  Old  English  period.  It 
is   hard    to   say  what    influences    brought    about    this 


342  English  Language. 

change.  In  the  case  of  draw,  it  may  have  been  after 
the  analogy  of  knaw,  a  common  variant  form  of 
know. 

226.  The  verb  heave  has  the  weak  inflection  as 
well  as  the  strong.  The  weak  forms  showed  them- 
selves indeed  towards  the  end  of  the  Anglo-Saxon 
period,  and  have  been  in  constant  use  ever  since. 
The  preterite  hove  is  more  common  than  the  past 
participle  of  the  same  form.  Into  the  latter  the  vowel 
q  of  the  former  had  early  intruded,  giving  us  hoven 
instead  of  haven.  But  to  both,  though  more  espe- 
cially to  the  past  participle,  the  language,  at  least  the 
literary  language,  prefers  in  most  cases  heaved. 

227.  Though  a  few  verbs  such  as  bide  and  gin  are 
rarely  to  be  met  with  in  Modern  English  save  as  com- 
pounded, the  word  forsake  —  from  for  and  saean,  '  to 
contend,'  —  is  the  single  instance  of  the  preservation 
in  our  language  of  a  compound  in  which  the  simple 
verb  has  perished  entirely. 

228.  The  verb  swear  of  this  class  has  been  marked 
by  certain  irregularities  which  belonged  to  it  from  the 
earliest  time.  In  particular,  during  the  Middle  Eng- 
lish period,  it  developed  the  preterite  sware  along 
with  the  regularly  formed  swore.  This  was  probably 
done  under  the  influence  of  the  earlier  preterites  bare 
and  tare  of  the  fourth  class  (206).  The  preterite 
vware  was  once  common,  being  in  fact  the  only  form 
found  in  our  version  of  the  Bible.  It  is  still  in  ex- 
istence, though  confined  usually  to  poetry  or  to  the 
designedly  archaic  style. 


Strong   Verbs.  —  Class   VI.  343 

229.  There  is  some  doubt  whether  the  simple  verb 
tacan,  '  to  take,'  existed  in  Anglo-Saxon,  though  verbs 
compounded  of  it  are  found.  The  same  statement  is 
true  of  wacan,  though  of  this  word  the  preterite  ai*d 
past  participle  certainly  occur.  The  modern  wake 
has  behind  it  both  a  strong  and  a  weak  verb,  and  it 
has  had  both  strong  and  weak  forms  during  the  whole 
period  of  its  history.  But  the  latter  have  until  lately 
been  generally  preferred.  In  fact,  the  strong  form 
woke  almost  disappeared  for  several  centuries  from 
the  language  of  literature, — so  much  so  that  it  was 
not  even  recognized  until  lately  in  our  dictionaries. 
It  has  now,  however,  become  full  as  common  as  the 
weak  form  waked  (247). 

230.  Most  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  verbs  belonging  to 
this  class  have  been  preserved  in  Modern  English, 
though  the  large  majority  of  them  have  gone  over 
entirely  or  partially  to  the  weak  conjugation.  The 
following  is  the  list  of  these  :  — 

1.  ache  (acatt).  9.  laugh  (hliehhan). 

2.  bake  (bacaii).  IO.  scathe  (scefiSan). 

3.  drag?  (dragari),  II.  shape  (scieppan). 

4.  fare  (farcin).  12.  shave  (sea fa  11). 

5.  flay  (Jieaii).  13.  step  (steppaii). 

6.  gnaw  (gnagan).  14.  wade  (wadan). 

7.  grave  (grafan).  15.  wash  (wascari). 

8.  lade  (hladan).  16.  wax  (we axan) . 

Drag  is  particularly  doubtful ;  instead  of  being  a 
variant  of  draw,  it  may  have  owed  its  origin  to  a 
Norse  verb  of  the  same  meaning. 


344  English  Language. 

231.  A  very  marked  peculiarity  of  all  these  verbs 
which  have  gone  over  to  the  weak  conjugation  is  the 
extent  to  which  they  have  retained  their  strong  parti- 
cipial forms.  Grave,  lade,  shape,  and  shave  have  still 
in  good  use  the  original  participles  graven,  laden, 
shapen,  and  shaven.  Shapen  is,  to  be  sure,  somewhat 
archaic,  and  the  same  may  be  said  of  gnawn,  which 
in  the  early  period  of  Modern  English  occasionally 
appears.  But  even  the  obsolete  or  archaic  participles 
baken,  plain,  washen,  and  waxen  lasted  down  to  a  late 
period,  usually,  of  course,  in  the  sense  of  adjectives. 

232.  A  variant  form  of  lade  is  load,  which  had  also 
the  past  participle  loaden,  now  comparatively  little  used. 
Load  may  have  come  from  the  Anglo-Saxon  verb  of 
which  lade  is  the  modern  representative,  but  it  is  more 
probably  from  the  noun  load,  itself  a  derivative  of  the 
primitive  verb.  In  the  latter  case,  it  would  be  pre- 
cisely like  the  verb  loan  derived  from  the  noun  spelled 
the  same  way,  and  thereby  furnishing  a  variant  form 
to  lene,  which,  during  the  Middle  English  period,  was 
corrupted  into  lend  by  the  addition  of  a  d. 

STRONG    VKRBS. CLASS    VII. 

233.  This  includes  the  whole  body  of  verbs  still 
existing  in  Anglo-Saxon,  which  in  the  primitive  Teu- 
tonic had  been  subject  to  reduplication  (16).  The 
number  in  our  early  speech  was  somewhat  over  fifty. 
In  all  of  them  the  contraction  of  the  reduplicating  and 
radical  syllables  gave  usually  e  or  eo  as  the  vowel  to 
both  numbers  of  the  preterite  (17). 


Strong;   Verbs.  —  Class    VII. 


345 


234.    Of  these  fifty  and  more  verbs  the  following 
still  survive  as  members  of  the  strong  conjugation  :  — 

1.  beat,                beatan;  beot,          beoton;  beaten. 

beat                       beat  beate>t,  beat 

2.  blow     (of      blawan;  bleow,        bleowon;  blawen. 
wind,  etc.),         blow                      blew  blown 

3.  blow     ('to     blowan;  bleow,       bleowon;  blowen. 
bloom'),              blow                       blew  blown 

crawan;  creow,       creowon;  crawen. 

crow                      crew  croived 

feallan;  feoll,          feollon;  feallen. 

fall                        fell  fallen 

growan;  greow,       greowon;  growen. 

grow                      greiv  grown 

hon;  heng,         hengon;  hangen. 

liang                    hung  hung 

healdan;  heold,        heoldon;  healden. 

hold                     held  held,  holden 


4.  crow, 

5.  fall, 

6.  grow, 

7.  hang, 

8.  hold, 

9.  know, 
10.  throw, 


cnawan;  cneow,       cneowon;  cnawen. 

know.  knezo  knoxvn 

hrawan;  l>reow,        breowon;  hrawen. 

throw  threw  thrown 


235.  Blow,  from  blawan,  has  sometimes  weak  forms 
as  well  as  the  regular  strong  ones,  though  hardly  in 
the  language  of  literature.  The  preterite  of  blow,  from 
blowan,  '  to  bloom,'  is  met  with  rarely.  Crow  has  a 
weak  preterite  as  well  as  a  strong  one,  and  in  the  past 
participle  the  weak  c roamed  has  supplanted  the  etymo- 
logically  correct  crown.  In  the  case  of  hold,  the  pret- 
erite has  made  its  way  into  the  past  participle,  though 


346  English  Language. 

the  original  form  holden  still  survives,  and  in  certain 
legal  phrases  is  the  one  regularly  employed. 

236.  Hang  has  a  peculiar  history  of  its  own.  In 
Anglo-Saxon,  along  with  the  strong  verb  Hon,  there 
was  a  weak  verb,  hangian.  In  Early  English  the 
forms  of  these  two  were  intermixed.  The  weak  verb 
was  adopted  as  the  present  and  infinitive  of  both,  and 
hon  was  consequently  disused.  The  past  participle  of 
the  strong  verb,  honge(n),  originally  hangen,  made  its 
way  into  the  preterite,  probably  at  first  into  the  plural, 
and  then  into  the  singular.  This  did  not  take  place 
early  in  the  language  of  literature.  Chaucer,  for  in- 
stance, still  has  the  preterite  heng.  It  was  during  the 
Middle  English  period  that  hung  became  the  estab- 
lished form,  displacing  the  still  earlier  hong.  Attempts 
have  been  made  in  Modern  English  to  make  a  distinc- 
tion between  the  use  of  the  strong  and  the  weak  verb  ; 
but  so  far  none  can  be  said  to  have  established  itself 
in  the  best  usage,  though  there  are  certain  expressions 
in  which  the  employment  of  the  one  is  generally  pre- 
ferred to  that  of  the  other. 

237.  Of  the  verbs  originally  belonging  to  this  class, 
the  following  have  gone  over  to  the  weak  conjuga- 
tion :  — 

1.  ban  (bannari).  6.  glow  (glowan). 

2.  claw  (clawan).  7.  hew  (heawari). 

3.  dread  (draidan).  8.  liight  (hatan). 

4.  flow  (Jlowaii).  9.   leap  (hteapari). 

5.  fold  {fealdan).  10.  let  {latan). 


Strong  Verbs.  —  Class    I  "II.  347 

11.  low  {hlowan).  17.  sow  (sawan). 

12.  mow  (jnawan).  18.  span  (s/a/ntan). 

13.  root  (of  swine)  [wrotan).  19.  swoop  (sTvapan  ) . 

14.  row  (rozvati).  20.   walk  (jvealcati). 

15.  shed  {sceadati).  21.  weep  (zvepari). 

16.  sleep  (s/ibpan).  22.  wheeze  (hwesan). 

To  these  may  be  added  the  two  following  words, 
obsolete  in  the  standard  literary  speech,  but  frequently 
appearing  in  imitations  of  the  archaic  style  :  — 

rede,  from  radan,  'to  advise.' 

greet,  from  gratan,  '  to  mourn.' 

238.  All  these  verbs  had  exhibited  weak  forms  at 
the  beginning  of  the  Middle  English  period,  though 
the  strong  forms  of  many  of  them  were  still  in 
existence,  especially  the  form  of  the  past  participle. 
This  three  of  them  still  continue  to  retain.  Hew, 
mow,  and  sow  have  the  strong  participles  hewn,  mown, 
and  sown  as  well  as  hewed,  mowed,  and  sowed.  In 
some  of  the  English  dialects,  indeed,  the  original 
strong  preterites  mew  and  sew  survive  for  mowed  and 
sowed.  Flow  also  shows  occasionally  the  past  par- 
ticiple flown  in  Modern  English,  though  almost  exclu- 
sively in  phrases  founded  upon  Milton's  use  of  the 
word  in  a  famous  passage.1 

239.  The   verb  hight,  '  to  call,'  or  '  to  be  called,' 

1  When  night 
Darkens  the  streets,  then  wander  forth  the  sons 
Of  Belial,  flown  with  insolence  and  wine. 

Paradise  Lost,  I.,  line  502. 


34-S  English  Language. 

has  now  hardly  any  existence  outside  of  poetry  or 
pieces  written  in  the  serio-comic  style.  It  is  etymo- 
logically  only  a  preterite.  The  forms  of  the  verbs  in 
Anglo-Saxon  were  :  — 

hatan;  heht  or  het,         hehton  or  heton;  haten. 

In  Early  English  this  verb  appeared  with  a  great 
variety  of  forms,  of  which  the.  following  may  serve  as 
examples  :  — 

haten  -v  hihte     -k  hoten  -k 

heten  \  ;  hi^t         >■  ;  het       >• . 

hoten  J  hyghte )  hyghtJ 

The  preterite  hight,  frequently  found  with  the  end- 
ing -e,  and  perhaps  considered  in  consequence  a  weak 
verb,  made  its  way  into  the  past  participle  and  the 
present  tense.  This  led  gradually  to  the  abandon- 
ment of  the  other  forms,  and  by  the  end  of  the 
Middle  English  period  hight  had  come  to  represent 
all  parts  of  the  verb  which  were  then  used.  It  ex- 
tended even  to  the  passive.  The  Anglo-Saxon  imtte, 
1 1  am  called,'  '  I  was  called,'  was  first  represented  in 
Early  English  by  hatte  and  hette ;  but  these  forms 
also  were  abandoned  for  hight.  The  passive  use  still 
continues  to  some  extent  in  Modern  English,  as,  for 
example,  in  the  following  lines  :  — 

The  one  Abydos,  the  other  Sestos  hight. 

Marlowe,  Hero  and Leander,  ist  sestiad. 

Father  he  hight  and  he  was  in  the  parish. 

Longfellow,  Children  of  the  Lord's  Supper,  line  48. 


The  Stro)ig  Conjugation.  349 

240.  This  completes  the  survey  of  the  strong  verbs 
still  existing  in  English.  We  are  now  in  a  position  to 
summarize  the  results  of  the  examination  that  has 
been  made,  and  to  bring  together  under  one  view  the 
scattered  facts  which  have  been  recounted  in  the  dis- 
cussion of  the  several  conjugations.  It  is,  of  course, 
to  be  borne  in  mind  that  in  all  statements  of  numbers 
which  follow,  the  same  rule  prevails  in  Modern  Eng- 
lish as  in  Anglo-Saxon.  It  is  the  simple  verbs  alone 
that  are  taken  into  consideration,  never  the  com- 
pound, unless  express  mention  is  made  to  that  effect. 
With  this  proviso  against  misunderstanding,  we  are 
enabled  to  make  safely  certain  general  statements. 

241.  The  first  is  that  Modern  English  retains  pre- 
cisely seventy-eight  of  the  three  hundred  strong  verbs, 
more  or  less,  which  are  to  be  found  in  Anglo-Saxon. 
Again,  of  these  three  hundred  about  eighty- eight 
others  still  exist  in  the  language,  but  have  gone  over 
to  the  weak  conjugation.  This  latter  number  cannot 
be  stated  with  absolute  accuracy.  In  the  case  of  a 
few  of  the  verbs,  included  in  the  lists  of  those  which 
have  passed  from  the  strong  conjugation  to  the  weak, 
there  is  some  doubt  as  to  their  originals  belonging  to 
the  former.  As  a  result  of  farther  investigation,  there- 
fore, some  may  have  to  be  taken  from  the  number 
just  given,  or  some  may  even  have  to  be  added  to  it. 
Still  the  list  will  not  vary  materially  from  what  has 
already  been  set  down.  Accordingly,  assuming  eighty- 
eight  as  a  number  not  far  out  of  the  way,  it  follows 
that  over  one  hundred  and  thirty  strong  verbs,  once 


350  English  Language. 

belonging  to  the  language,  have  disappeared  from  it 
entirely.  Some  of  these  were  obsolescent,  or,  per- 
haps, obsolete  in  later  Anglo-Saxon,  and  cannot  fairly 
be  reckoned  among  the  losses  of  our  speech  after  the 
Conquest.  Of  those,  however,  that  were  in  common 
use  during  the  earliest  period,  and  have  since  been 
dropped,  the  places  have,  in  the  majority  of  instances, 
been  taken  by  verbs  derived  from  the  Norman- French. 
242.  The  second  statement  is,  that  of  the  seventy- 
eight  existing  strong  verbs  which  have  come  down  to 
us  from  Anglo-Saxon  verbs  of  the  same  conjugation, 
fourteen  have  either  developed  weak  forms  also,  or 
possess  weak  forms  which  may  be  due  to  a  weak 
Anglo-Saxon  verb  that  stood  alongside  of  the  cor- 
responding strong  one.  Hence  they  may  be  said  to 
belong  to  both  conjugations.  These  are  the  following, 
arranged  under  their  respective  classes  :  — 


I. 

IV. 

abide. 

shear. 

cleave, 

'to  adhere.' 

shine. 

v. 

shrive. 

weave 

II. 

VI. 

cleave, 

'  to  split.' 

heave. 

seethe. 

wake. 

ill. 

VII. 

climb. 

crow. 

help. 

hang. 

The  Strong  Conjugation.  3  5 1 

Moreover,  of  these  fourteen  the  strong  forms  of  four 

—  cleave,  'to  adhere,'  seethe,  climb,  and  help — -belong 
to  the  language  of  poetry  rather  than  of  prose.  In 
the  case  of  two  others  —  shear  and  heave  —  the  weak 
form  is,  on  the  whole,  more  common  in  the  preterite 
of  the  first  and  in  the  participle  of  the  second. 

243.  The  third  statement  is,  that  to  these  seventy- 
eight  verbs  which  have  exhibited  strong  forms  during 
all  periods  of  our  speech,  there  have  been  added,  in 
the  course  of  its  history,  thirteen  others.  These  are 
chide,  hide,  strive,  and  thrive,  which  can  be  assigned  to 
Class  I.  ;  fling,  ring,  dig,  stick,  and  string,  to  Class 
III.  ;  wear,  to  Class  IV. ;  spit,  to  Class  V.  ;  and  reeve 
and  stave,  to  Class  VI.  Furthermore,  as  regards  origin, 
seven  of  these  thirteen — chide,  hide,  ring,  dig,  stick, 
wear,  and  spit — have  been  derived  from  verbs  of  the 
Anglo-Saxon  weak  conjugation  ;  two  —  thrive  and  fling 

—  have  come  into  the  language  from  the  Old  Norse  ; 
and  one,  strive,  from  the  Old  French.  The  remaining 
three  are  either  of  uncertain  etymology  or  have  sprung 
from  nouns.  Furthermore,  six  of  these  thirteen  — 
chide,  strive,  thrive,  spit,  reeve,  and  stave  —  have  also 
forms  of  the  weak  conjugation  in  use.  The  same  is 
true,  though  not  to  so  marked  a  degree,  of  dig. 

244.  The  fourth  statement  is,  that  with  the  verbs 
directly  descended  from  Anglo-Saxon  primitives,  and 
with  those  derived  from  other  sources,  there  are  at 
present  in  the  language  seventy-one  verbs  which  be- 
long exclusively  to  the  strong  conjugation  ;  and  twenty 
which  form  their  principal  parts  sometimes  according 


35  2  Engl  is  Ji  Language. 

to  it  and  sometimes  according  to  the  weak  conjugation. 
This  would  make  ninety-one  verbs  now  existing  in 
our  tongue  which  exhibit,  either  invariably  or  occa- 
sionally, the  strong  inflection. 

245.  As  applied  to  the  present  speech,  the  foregoing 
statements  are  sufficiently  accurate.  At  the  same  time, 
it  must  not  be  forgotten  that  great  variations  exist  in 
the  good  usage  of  even  the  same  period,  and  very 
great  variations  in  the  good  usage  of  different  periods. 
All  general  assertions  are  therefore  liable  to  meet  with 
specific  exceptions.  What  would  be  regarded  as  cor- 
rect at  one  time  is  treated  as  incorrect  at  another. 
Coined  for  came  is  met  with  frequently  in  the  writings 
of  the  Elizabethan  age.  Wallis,  the  noted  grammarian 
of  the  seventeenth  century,  whose  work  first  came  out 
in  1652,  inserts  in  it  the  weak  forms  beared,  choosed, 
drawed,  spinned,  swimmed,  and  throw.ed,  along  with 
bore,  chose,  drew,  spun,  swum,  and  threw.  Though 
such  weak  forms  could  not  have  been  common  among 
the  educated,  it  seems  unreasonable  to  suppose  that 
they  were  not  employed  by  them  at  all.  Furthermore, 
both  Ben  Jonson  and  Wallis  introduced  snow,  snew, 
and  siii'7^/1  as  a  regular  inflection  of  snow,  though 
these  strong  forms  are  certainly  rare  in  literature,  if 
even  known  to  it  at  all.1 

246.  There  has,  however,  been  an  occasional  ten- 
dency on  the  part  of  weak  verbs  to  pass  over  to  the 

1  It  is,  perhaps,  possible  that  this  was  a  misprint  in  Ben  Jon- 
son's  Grammar  oi  tAow,  shew,  shown,  and  that  it  was  copied  on  his 
authority  by  Wallis. 


The  Strong  Conjugation.  353 

strong  conjugation  ;  and  in  the  case  of  three,  a  strong 
passive  participle  has  been  added  to  their  inflection. 
They  are  the  following  :  — 


,  ,         .  showed,  ) 

1.  show,  showed,  ,  >• 

shown.    ) 

strewed,  ) 

2.  strew,  strewed,  > 

strewn.     • 

sawed,     "I 

3.  saw,  sawed,  > 

sawn.       ) 


The  first  of  these  is  derived  from  the  Anglo-Saxon 
weak  verb  sceawian,  sceawode ;  the  second,  which  is 
often  written  and  oftener  pronounced  as  strow,  is  from 
the  Anglo-Saxon  weak  verb  streawian,  streawode.  It 
was  in  the  Middle  English  period  that  the  strong  parti- 
cipial forms  of  these  two  words  came  into  use  along- 
side of  the  weak  ones ;  and,  as  in  like  instances,  the 
analogy  of  verbs  like  know,  blow,  grow,  and  others, 
had  the  most  powerful  influence  in  their  production 
and  wide  employment.  But  the  strong  forms  never 
extended  beyond  the  past  participle,  though  the  strong 
preterite  shew  for  showed  early  established  itself  in  the 
provincial  dialects,  and  has  never  died  out.  Saw,  as 
a  verb,  does  not  apparently  go  back  to  an  early  period. 
It  was  doubtless  derived  from  the  noun  spelled  in  the 
same  way,  and  its  strong  past  participle  seems  to  have 
been  developed  first  in  Modern  English. 

247.  One  further  point  needs  to  be  brought  out 
before  concluding  the  examination  of  the  changes  that 
have   gone  on  in  the  strong  conjugation.      No  verb 


354  English  Language. 

which  reached  the  beginning  of  the  Modern  English 
period  with  strong  forms  in  common  use  ever  let  the 
strong  forms  go  out  of  common  use.  There  are  verbs 
such  as  climb  and  help  which  now  belong  regularly  to 
the  weak  conjugation,  though  they  are  occasionally 
inflected  according  to  the  strong.  But  this  was  as  true 
of  them  in  the  sixteenth  century  as  it  is  now.1  We 
are  consequently  enabled  to  say,  that  since  the  reign  of 
Queen  Elizabeth  (1558-1603),  our  speech  has  not 
lost  a  single  strong  verb.  What  the  language  then  had 
it  has  ever  since  retained.  Nor  does  it  manifest  the 
least  disposition  to  abandon  any  it  now  has.  True, 
there  have  been  periods  in  which  weak  preterites  and 
past  participles,  like  choosed,  Mowed,  freezed,  weaved, 
and  numerous  others,  occur  to  a  greater  or  less  extent, 
and  at  times  have  found  favor  with  some  grammarians. 
Hut  their  employment  has  never  broadened  and  per- 
petuated itself.  In  fact,  the  present  disposition  of  the 
language  is  not  only  to  cling  firmly  to  the  strong  verbs 
it  already  possesses,  but  to  strengthen  their  hold,  and 
even  to  extend  their  number  whenever  possible. 
Forms  once  common,  and  in  the  best  usage,  such  as 
shaked,  shined,  strived,  and  thrived,  are  either  now 
much  rarer  than  shook,  shone,  strove,  and  throve,  or 
else  arc  not  met  with  at  all.  Woke,  though  not  found 
in  Shakspeare,  Milton,  and  the  English  Bible,  has  be- 
come, during  the  last  century,  full  as  common  as 
waked  as  the  preterite  of  wake;  while  dug  may  be 
said  to  have  supplanted  digged,  the  regular  preterite, 

1  See  page  155.  , 


The    Weak  Conjugation.  355 

not  only  of  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries, 
but  of  all  preceding  periods. 

248.  So  decided,  in  truth,  is  the  disposition  the  lan- 
guage now  displays  to  prefer  the  strong  forms,  that  it  is 
not  impossible  that  some  verbs  now  inflected  weak  will 
return  to  their  oil  conjugation,  or  that  others  which 
are  strictly  weak  will  pass  over  to  the  strong.  Atten- 
tion has  already  been  called  to  the  inflection  of  dive 
(188).  Cases  of  this  kind  may  be  always  expected  to 
occur.  The  English  dialects  also  have  retained  the 
strong  form  in  some  cases  where  the  literary  language 
has  assumed  the  weak,  and  at  any  moment  the  original 
inflection  may  be  taken  up  by  the  latter  from  the 
former.  These  dialects,  indeed,  have  often  developed 
strong  forms  in  verbs  that  are  strictly  weak,  as  has 
already  been  seen  in  the  case  of  show,  sliew,  which  is 
found  both  in  England  and  this  country.  So,  also, 
squeeze  has  a  strong  preterite  squoze  in  the  dialects  of 
some  parts  of  England  ;  and  this  can  be  heard,  like- 
wise, in  various  parts  of  the  United  States  in  the  speech 
of  the  uneducated.  Sporadic  forms  like  these  crop  up 
here  and  there  constantly  in  our  literature  ;  and  their 
occurrence  renders  it  unsafe  to  assert  that  particular 
inflections  are  never  employed.  It  can  only  be  said 
that  they  are  not  the  ones  usually  employed. 

The  Weak  Conjugation. 

249.  It  has  already  been  pointed  out  that  the  dis- 
tinguishing characteristic  of  the  weak  conjugation  is, 
that  it  now  adds,  or  originally  added,  a  syllable  to  form 


356  English  Language. 

the  preterite  ;  and  that  this  syllable  was,  according  to 
a  generally  received  theory,  nothing  more  than  a 
verbal  form  corresponding  to  the  reduplicated  pret- 
erite of  the  English  verb  do.  This  supposed  ancient 
form  may  be  best  explained  by  the  following  hypo- 
thetical account  of  its  origin.  Instead  of  employing 
an  expression  equivalent  to  /  did  love,  the  preterite 
was  denoted  by  an  expression  equivalent  to  love-did- 
I ;  and  this  appended  verb  was  so  cut  down,  and  so 
closely  united  with  the  leading  verb,  that  only  traces 
of  it  were  left.  It  was  only  in  the  dual  and  plural 
numbers  of  the  Gothic  preterite  that  its  full  form  was 
seen.  In  Anglo-Saxon  all  that  remained  of  it  in  the 
first  person  of  the  preterite  singular  was  -de.  For 
instance,  hedan,  '  to  heed,'  had  for  its  past  tense 
l/edde,  '  heeded.'  In  general  terms  it  may  be  said 
that  the  Anglo-Saxon  weak  verb  formed  its  preterite 
by  adding  -de,  or,  in  certain  circumstances,  -te. 

250.  Its  passive  participle  was  also  distinguished 
from  that  of  the  strong  conjugation  by  the  fact  that 
the  latter  ended  in  -en  ;  while  in  the  former  the  termi- 
nation was  -d,  or  occasionally  -/. 

251.  Furthermore,  the  Teutonic  weak  verb  was 
divided  into  three  conjugations,  according  to  the 
character  of  the  connective  which  entered  between 
the  stem  and  the  termination.  All  of  these  three  are 
preserved  in  Gothic  and  Old  High  German.  But  in 
the  other  early  Teutonic  tongues  the  third  of  the  conju- 
gations above  mentioned,  the  one  with  the  connective 
at,  had  practically  disappeared.     The  verbs  originally 


The   Weak  Conjugation.  357 

belonging  to  it  had  largely  gone  over  to  the  second  con- 
jugation, and  the  few  which  survived  had  intermixed 
forms  derived  from  both  the  second  and  the  first. 

252.  The  other  two  conjugations  were  both  flour- 
ishing during  the  earliest  period.  The  original  con- 
nective in  the  first  class  had  in  Anglo-Saxon  become 
e,  in  the  second  it  had  become  0;  and  hence  the 
termination  added  to  the  stem  was  in  one  case  -ede, 
in  the  other  -ode.  But  a  further  modification  of  the 
inflection  took  place  in  the  former  class.  AY  hen  the 
stem  of  a  verb  of  the  first  conjugation  was  long,  the 
connective  e  was  dropped  in  the  preterite.  For  illus- 
tration, hyr-an,  '  to  hear,'  with  its  long  stem  hyr, 
formed  the  preterite  hyr-de,  '  heard,'  not  hyr-e-de. 

253.  In  the  English  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  period, 
consequently,  there  may  be  said  to  be  two  conjuga- 
tions of  the  weak  verb,  —  one  forming  the  preterite 
by  adding  -de,  or  -ede,  to  the  stem,  the  other  by  add- 
ing -ode.  There  were  phonetic  influences  at  work 
which,  under  certain  conditions,  changed  or  modified 
the  character  of  the  terminations,  as  will  be  seen 
farther  on,  but  those  just  given  may  be  regarded  as 
the  strictly  normal  endings.  The  following  examples 
will  illustrate  the  differences  between  them  :  — 


dem-an,        deem 
fyll-an,        Jill 


dem-de. 
fyl-de. 


f  L 

er-ia-n,         plough  er-e-de 


J 


trymm-an,    strengthen  J  trym-e-de. 

loc-ia-n,       look  ~\  16c-o-de. 

wun-ia-n,     dwell  >  wun-o-de. 


358  English  Language. 

254.  These  represent  the  two  early  weak  conjuga- 
tions as  distinguished  from  each  other  in  the  preterite. 
But  within  certainly  a  century  and  a  half  after  the 
Norman  Conquest  the  distinction  had  disappeared. 
The  connective  0  of  the  second  conjugation  was  gen- 
erally weakened  to  e,  although  it  is  occasionally  found 
even  as  late  as  the  end  of  the  thirteenth  century,  and 
perhaps  still  later.  A  necessary  result  of  this  was,  that 
verbs  of  the  original  Anglo-Saxon  second  conjugation 
formed  their  preterites  precisely  like  short-stemmed 
verbs  of  the  first  conjugation,  both  having  the  connec- 
tive e.  Thus,  in  the  case  of  the  preterites  of  the  two 
verbs  of  that  conjugation  just  given,  locode  was  in 
Early  English  represented  by  lokede,  and  wunode  by 
wonede. 

255.  To  this  same  practice  conformed,  in  the  latter 
part  of  the  Old  English  period,  and  still  more  in  the 
Middle  English  period,  many,  and  perhaps  most,  of 
the  long-stemmed  verbs  of  the  first  conjugation.  To 
use  the  preceding  examples,  the  preterite  demde  be- 
came demede ;  the  preterite  fylde  became  both  filde 
and  fittede,  with  an  increasing  tendency,  after  the 
beginning  of  the  Middle  English  period,  to  employ 
the  fuller  form.  During  that  period,  consequently,  the 
connective  e  had  become  the  general  connective  of 
the  weak  preterite.  This  it  lias  always  since  remained. 
There  were,  and  still  are,  many  exceptions  to  this  rule  ; 
but,  as  a  general  statement,  it  is  sufficiently  accurate. 

256.  It  may  therefore  be  said  that  -ede  in  the  Old 
English  period  was  added  to  the  stem  of  weak  verbs 


The    Weak  Conjugation.  359 

to  form  the  preterite.  Thus  the  past  tense  of  look 
was  written  and  pronounced  lookede.  But  in  the 
fourteenth  century  certainly,  and  perhaps  earlier,  the  -e 
final  of  -ede  began  to  disappear  from  pronunciation, 
and  in  the  fifteenth  century  the  practice  became  gen- 
eral not  to  sound  it.  At  the  beginning  of  Modern 
English  it  had  disappeared  entirely.  Its  disuse  in 
pronunciation  led,  likewise,  to  its  disuse  in  writing  or 
printing ;  lookede,  to  continue  the  same  illustration, 
became  looked.  This  left  -ed  as  the  addition  with 
which  to  form  the  preterite  in  Modern  English.  It 
was  also  attended  by  another  consequence.  As  the 
past  participle  usually  ended  in  -ed,  the  dropping  of 
the  final  -e  of  the  preterite  was  followed  necessarily 
by  the  result  that  the  forms  for  the  preterite  and  the 
past  participle  became  the  same. 

257.  But  the  modification  of  the  preterite  did  not 
stop  here.  At  the  beginning  of  the  Modern  English 
period  the  connective  e  of  the  preterite  ending  -ed  — 
and  the  statement  is  likewise  true  of  the  past  participle 
—  began  to  be  dropped  in  pronunciation.  During 
the  sixteenth  century,  and  perhaps  even  later,  usage 
seems  to  have  varied  on  this  point.  In  some  words, 
or  by  some  persons,  the  -ed  was  pronounced  as  a 
distinct  syllable ;  and  in  other  words,  or  by  other 
persons,  the  e  was  not  sounded,  and  the  -d  was  joined 
directly  in  pronunciation  to  the  preceding  syllable, 
where  it  necessarily  had  often  the  sound  of  /.  Lookiil 
of  Middle  English  came,  in  consequence,  in  Modern 
English,  to  have  the  sound  of  lookt. 


360  English  Language. 

258.  The  process  by  which  this  result  was  reached 
was  unquestionably  a  gradual  one.  The  hurried  speech 
of  ordinary  colloquial  intercourse  was  necessarily  the 
first  to  adopt  it,  and  from  that  it  made  its  way  into 
general  use.  The  poetry  of  the  end  of  the  sixteenth 
century  shows  that  the  dropping  of  the  e  of  -ed  in 
pronunciation  had  become  widespread,  and  almost  as 
universal  as  it  is  in  the  nineteenth.  On  this  point  the 
spelling  is  now  of  little  or  no  service  ;  for,  in  writing 
or  print,  the  full  orthographic  form  is,  in  the  large 
majority  of  instances,  retained.  At  the  present  time 
the  -ed  is  rarely  heard  as  a  distinct  syllable,  save  in 
verbs  ending  in  -d  or  -/,  as  dread,  dreaded,  wet,  wetted; 
and  in  certain  participles  used  as  adjectives,  such  as 
aged  and  learned,  to  distinguish  them  from  the  same 
words  when  used  strictly  as  participles.  The  dropping 
of  the  e  in  some  cases,  however,  caused  a  change  of 
pronunciation,  which,  in  return,  reacted  upon  the 
spelling  of  the  preterite  ;  but  tins  will  be  considered 
later  (265). 

259.  The  termination  of  the  regular  preterite  of 
the  weak  verb  can,  therefore,  be  described  as  having 
passed  through  the  following  changes  :  At  the  outset, 
it  was  -de,  -ede,  or  -ode.  All  these  were  represented 
in  Old  English  generally  by  -ede,  and  occasionally  by 
-de  simply.  Ede,  however,  increased  steadily  in  use 
during  the  Middle  English  period,  but  during  that 
same  period  dropped  its  final  -e.  This  left  -ed  to  be 
transmitted  to  Modern  English  as  the  normal  termina- 
tion of  the  preterite,  though  in  the  case  of  verbs  ending 


Irregular  Weak    Verbs.  361 

with  the  unsounded  final  -e,  such  as  love,  hate,  the 
vowel  was  not  doubled.  This  statement  is  neces- 
sarily true  only  of  the  present  spelling,  not,  as  we  have 
just  seen,  of  the  present  pronunciation.  We  add  -ed 
in  writing ;  in  speaking  we  usually  add  only  -d,  or 
sometimes  -/.  We  write  thanked,  for  instance  ;  we 
give  it  the  sound  of  thankt. 

260.  In  the  following  scheme  the  variations  in  form 
and  pronunciation  which  have  marked  the  history  of 
the  verbs  deem,  fill,  and  look  in  their  transition  from 
Anglo-Saxon  through  Old  English  and  Middle  Eng- 
lish to  Modern  English,  will  indicate  the  nature  of  the 
changes  that  have  taken  place  in  the  regular  verb  of 
the  weak  conjugation  :  — 

deman,      demde;     demde;    demede;    deemed  (flron.  deemd). 
fyllan,        fylde;         filde;        fillede;        filled  (pron.  fild). 
locian,       locode;      lokede;    lookede;    looked  (proii.  lookt). 

261.  So  much  for  the  strictly  regular  forms.  We 
come  now  to  the  consideration  of  the 

IRREGULAR  VERBS  OF  THE  WEAK  CONJUGATION, 

and  of  the  causes  which  have  led  to  the  variations  of 
form  that  now  exist.  These  verbs  may  be  divided 
into  the  two  following  classes  :  — 

1.  Verbs  in  which  the  vowel  of  the  stem  remains 

the  same  throughout,  and  the  variations  which 
occur  affect  only  the  terminations. 

2.  Verbs  in  which  the  vowel  of  the  stem  undergoes 

variation. 


362  English  Language. 

262.  In  discussing  the  verbs  of  the  first  class,  it  is 
to  be  remarked  at  the  outset  that,  even  in  Anglo- 
Saxon,  the  termination  of  the  preterite  was  subjected 
to  that  same  modification,  which  has  been  widely  ex- 
tended in  Modern  English.  From  it  have  sprung,  in 
consequence,  a  number  of  peculiar  forms  different 
from  those  of  the  regular  inflection.  As  the  connec- 
tive ia  weakened  to  c  was  dropped  in  the  majority  of 
verbs  of  the  first  weak  conjugation,  the  result  was,  that 
-de  was  added  directly  to  the  stem,  as  in  the  preterites 
demde  and  fylde  given  above  (253).  The  effect  of 
this  was,  in  some  cases,  to  change  the  pronunciation. 
The  spelling  conforming  to  the  sound,  d  after  certain 
consonants  became  /;  and  -tc  was  the  syllable  added, 
and  not  -de. 

263.  In  Anglo-Saxon,  this  was  regularly  the  case 
when  the  stem  of  the  verb  ended  in  c,  p,  t,  x,  and 
sometimes  in  s,  as  will  be  seen  by  the  following  ex- 
amples, in  which  the  past  participles  are  given  as  well 
as  the  preterites.  It  will  be  noticed  that  c  final  of  the 
root  passes,  in  the  preterite,  into  h  :  — 


Infinitives. 

Preterites. 

Past  Participles. 

secan,   seek, 

sohte, 

soht. 

1  epan,  keep, 

cepte, 

ceped. 

cyssan,  kiss, 

cyste, 

cyssed. 

gretan,  greet, 

grette, 

greted. 

lixan,     shine, 

lixte, 

lixed. 

264.    In   Early  English  some  of  these  verbs  occa- 
sionally resumed  the  connective  c  before  the  ending 


Irregular  Weak   Verbs.  363 

of  the  preterite.  In  that  case  the  regular  termination 
-de  was  employed,  instead  of  -te.  Thus,  the  past 
tenses  of  eepan  and  cyssan,  given  above,  became  in 
later  English,  according  to  the  pronunciation,  either 
kepte  and  kiste,  or  kepede  and  kissede.  There  was  a 
natural  tendency  to  extend  to  all  verbs  a  termination 
which  was  given  to  the  vast  majority.  This,  to  a  cer- 
tain extent,  diminished  the  number  of  those  which,  in 
Anglo-Saxon,  had  formed  the  preterite  by  adding  -te. 
When,  in  later  English,  the  final  -e  of  this  ending  -ede 
dropped  from  the  spelling,  and  the  connective  e  from 
the  pronunciation,  change  was  rarely  made  in  the 
orthography  to  indicate  the  change  of  sound.  We 
retain  the  spelling  of  one  form  and  the  pronunciation 
of  the  other,  as  has  been  pointed  out  in  the  instances 
of  looked  and  thanked  (257,  259).  These  are  types  of 
a  large  number  of  words  now  existing  in  our  speech. 

265.  It  was  not  always  the  case,  however,  that  the 
form  which  represented  the  actual  pronunciation  was 
rejected  entirely.  In  some  instances  it  continued  in 
use,  though  rarely  in  exclusive  use.  The  consequence 
is,  that  in  Modern  English,  a  number  of  double  forms 
for  the  preterite  and  past  participle  are  employed, 
differing  from  each  other,  in  some  cases,  only  in 
spelling,  and  not  at  all  in  pronunciation  ;  or,  if  ever 
differing  in  pronunciation,  they  differ  only  in  the  sound 
of  final  -d  or  -t.  They  usually  occur  in  words  ending 
in  /,  //,  11,  f>,  s/i,  or  in  those  ending  in  the  sound  of  s. 
The  following  list  will  furnish  some  of  the  more 
common  examples  :  — 


364 


spell, 
pen, 
learn, 
dip, 


English  Language. 

fix, 

spoil, 

bless, 


spelled,  -j 
spelt.  J 
penned,  -k 
pent.  J 
learned,  -> 
learnt,  J 
clipped,  -. 
dipt.        J 


curse, 


fixed, 

fixt. 

spoiled, 

spoilt. 

blessed, 

blest. 

cursed, 

curst. 


266.  There  are  many  double  forms,  like  these,  to 
be  found  at  various  periods  in  our  literature  ;  but  in 
earlier  times  they  usually  represented  actual  differ- 
ence of  pronunciation.  Thus  Spenser,  for  instance, 
indicated  as  a  rule  the  sound  of  the  termination  by  its 
spelling.  We  find,  for  example,  in  the  first  canto  of 
the  first  book  of  "The  Faerie  Queene,"  the  preterites 
advaunst,  approcht,  cald,  chaunst,  displaid,  enhaunst, 
expeld,  font,  gazd,  glaunst,  knock t,  mournd,  perceivd, 
playnd,  pusht,  raizd,  retournd  or  returnd,  seemd,  stopt 
and  strowd ;  and  also  the  past  participles  benumb  J, 
com pcld,  dazd,  dismayd,  drownd,  enforst,  ravisht,  re- 
soled, x-  rock?,  stretcht,  subdewd,  tost,  and  vanquisht. 
There  can  be  found,  it  is  true,  the  present  way  of  indi- 
cating the  fact  that  the  e  of  the  termination  is  not  to 
be  pronounced,  by  the  insertion  of  the  apostrophe  in 
its  place.  Still  this  method  does  not  occur  in  half  a 
dozen  instances.  It  is  only  when  the  ending  consti- 
tutes a  distini  t  syllable  in  pronunciation  that  we  find 
the  full  form  written  by  Spenser,  as  in  seemed,  drowned, 
;ind  forced  in  this  same  canto.     With  us  -d  is  no  longer 


Irregular   Weak   Verbs.  365 

added  directly  to  the  stem,  except  in  a  few  cases  to  be 
considered  later.  The  adding  of  -t  is  more  common  ; 
but  in  general  it  may  be  said  of  this  ending  that  it  is 
found  much  oftener  in  the  early  literature  of  Modern 
English  than  in  that  of  the  present  time. 

267.  A  series  of  forms,  allied  to  these,  though  of  a 
somewhat  different  origin,  comes  now  to  be  considered. 
In  Anglo-Saxon,  verbal  stems  ending  in  -d  or  -/,  pre- 
ceded by  a  consonant,  usually  dropped  the  final  letter 
of  the  stem  in  the  preterite.  The  conjugation  of  the 
verbs  from  which  send  and  gird  have  been  derived 
will  show  the  original  forms  :  — 

sendan,  sende,  sended 

gyrdan,  gyrde,  gyrded. 

Occasionally  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  period,  forms  with 
t  instead  of  d  showed  themselves  in  certain  of  these 
verbs  ;  and  there  was  even  then  a  disposition  to  drop 
the  -ed  of  the  participle.  In  Early  English  the  ten- 
dency to  employ  /  for  d  became  more  pronounced. 
The  termination  -te  accordingly  took  its  place  beside 
-de  in  many  of  these  verbs,  and  was  often  far  more 
common  in  some  of  them.  Their  introduction  into 
the  preterite  may  have  been  largely  aided  by  their 
adoption  into  the  past  participle,  where  in  many 
cases,  certainly,  they  were  at  first  more  frequently 
found. 

268.  Here,  again,  the  same  course  of  proceeding 
took  place  as  in  the  verbs  whose  history  has  just  been 
given.     After  the  contracted  forms  for  the   preterite 


366  English  Language. 

and  past  participle  had  become  established,  new  and 
strictly  regular  forms  were  often  developed  by  the 
adding  of  -ed.  These  have  become  the  ones  generally 
found  in  Modern  English.  Still  some  of  these  verbs 
with  contract  forms  continue  to  survive  in  the  lan- 
guage.    They  are  included  in  the  following  list :  — 


I. 

lend, 

lent. 

4- 

spend, 

spent. 

2. 

rend, 

rent. 

5- 

(wend, 

went) 

3- 

send, 

sent. 

Of  these  rend  has  occasionally  the  full  form  vended ; 
while  went  has  become  the  preterite  of  the  verb  go, 
and  wend  has  developed,  to  take  its  place,  the  regular 
form  wended  (435). 

269.  Some  of  these  verbs,  however,  are  still  found 
with  full  and  contracted  forms  of  the  preterite  and 
past  participle  existing  side  by  side.  Usage  varies  in 
the  case  of  each,  one  form  being  more  common  in 
some  verbs,  the  other  more  common  in  others.  The 
following  is  the  list :  — 


'» 


1.  bend, 

2.  blend, 


bended,  -1  gelded,  ^ 

bent.        /  gelt.       J 

blended,  ^  .                gilded,  -> 

blent.       /  5'   g"'            gilt.       J 

builded,  )  girded,  •> 

3.    build,  6.   gird,  .  \ 

built.        )  girt.        J 

These  are  to  be  distinguished  from  such  preterites  as 
/earned  and  learnt,  dwelled  and  d7celt,  mixed  and  mixt, 
passed  and  past  (265)  ;  for  in  these  latter,  while  there 


Irregular   Weak    Verbs.  367 

is  an  actual  difference  in  the  spelling,  there  is  usually 
no  additional  syllable  heard  in  the  pronunciation  of 
the  fuller  form. 

270.  These  verbs,  it  will  be  observed,  have  pre- 
served a  distinct  form  for  the  preterite  and  past  par- 
ticiple either  by  changing  -d  into  -/,  or  by  adding,  so  as 
to  form  a  distinct  syllable,  the  ending  -ed  which  had 
then  come  to  be  the  one  regularly  employed.  This 
latter  was  the  method  usually  resorted  to,  even  in  the 
case  of  verbs  ending  in  -d  or  -/.  Thus  the  Early 
English  dreden  had  a  preterite  dredde,  and  greten  had 
the  preterite  grette.  When  the  final  -e  ceased  to  be 
pronounced,  the  place  of  -de  and  -te  was  taken  in 
both  instances  by  the  regular  ending  -ed.  The  Mod- 
ern English  forms  are  accordingly  dreaded  and  greeted. 
But  this  change  did  not  invariably  occur.  We  come, 
in  consequence,  to  the  consideration  of  a  class  of 
verbs  which  dropped  the  termination  of  the  preterite 
and  past  participle  altogether.  This,  with  the  losses 
which  took  place  in  other  parts  of  the  verb,  had  the 
effect  of  making  all  the  principal  parts  exactly  alike 
in  form. 

271.  To  illustrate  the  precise  history  of  these  verbs, 
let  us  take  two  —  sprcedan,  '  to  spread,'  and  settan,  '  to 
set.'  The  following  are  the  principal  parts  in  Anglo- 
Saxon  :  — 

Infinitive.  Preterite.  Past  Participle. 

spraklan,  sprsedde,  sprawled. 

seted   1 
settan,  sette,  >. 

set(t)  i 


368  English  Language. 

The  infinitives  of  these  two  verbs  became  in  Old  Eng- 
lish spreden  and  seiten,  and,  with  the  disappearance 
of  the  final  -;/,  sprede  and  scttc.  With  these  latter 
agreed,  as  usual,  the  forms  for  the  first  person  of  the 
present  tense.  The  past  participle  also  dropped  gen- 
erally its  ending.  It  had  shown,  even  in  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  period,  a  decided  leaning  towards  contraction, 
as  witness  above  in  the  case  of  set(t),  found  alongside 
of  seted.  This  now  became  the  rule  in  verbs  of  this 
kind.  Accordingly,  during  the  Early  English  period 
these  verbs  presented  ordinarily  the  following  inflec- 
tion :  — 

sprede,  spredde,  spred. 

sette,  sette,  set. 

272.  During  the  fifteenth  century  the  final  -e  disap- 
peared from  these  forms  in  writing,  as  a  result  of  its 
disappearance  from  pronunciation.  In  consequence, 
the  second  d  or  /,  whenever  it  would  have  been  left  in 
the  inflection,  was  dropped  as  unnecessary.  The  re- 
sult accordingly  was  that  the  forms  for  the  infinitive 
and  the  present,  the  preterite  and  the  past  participle, 
came  to  be  precisely  alike  ;  and  these  verbs  entered 
Modern  English  with  the  following  inflection,  which 
they  still  retain  :  — 

spread,  spread,  spread, 

set,  set,  set. 

What  is  true  of  these  is  true  of  several  other  Anglo- 
Saxon  verbs,  whose  principal  parts  have  come  to  pre- 
sent no  change  of  form  in  Modern  English. 


Irregular  Weak    Verbs.  369 

273.  But  the  tendency  to  bring  about  this  result 
was  not  limited  to  native  verbs.  Words  were  brought 
also  into  this  class  which  did  not  belong  to  the  Anglo- 
Saxon,  but  came  from  the  Norse  or  the  Norman- 
French.  Even  words  which  in  Anglo-Saxon  added 
-ode  to  form  the  preterite,  and  not  simply  -de,  were 
sometimes  made  to  conform  to  this  inflection.  It  was 
inevitable,  however,  after  verbs  had  thus  been  stripped 
of  their  original  endings,  and  had  been  reduced  to 
one  unvarying  form  in  their  principal  parts,  that  a 
reaction  should  set  in.  In  some  instances  this  has 
been  wholly  successful.  The  verb  has  become  strictly 
regular.  In  other  cases,  contract  and  full  forms  of 
the  preterite  came  into  use,  and  have  since  been  re- 
tained side  by  side.  In  certain  instances  the  contract 
forms  have  become  the  exclusive  ones.  The  general 
present  practice  of  the  language  in  regard  to  these 
latter  will  now  be  exhibited.  In  those  derived  from 
the  Anglo-Saxon,  the  principal  parts  as  found  in  that 
period,  in  the  Early  English  period,  and  in  the  Modern 
English  period,  will  be  given  in  each  case. 

274.  The  following  are  the  verbs  that  belonged  to 
the  weak  conjugation  in  the  original  tongue.  In  the 
case  of  a  few  of  them  certain  of  the  principal  parts 
are  theoretical,  especially  the  past  participles  :  — 


1.    hreddan, 

hredde, 

hreded 

redde(n)  •> 
ridde  (n)    ' 

redde  -| 
ridde  i 

red  1 

rid  r 

rid, 

rid, 

rid. 

370 


English  Language. 


2. 

settan, 
sette(n), 

sette, 
sette, 

seted    ) 
set(t)   J 
set. 

set, 

set, 

set. 

3- 

scyttan, 
schutte(n)  "1 
schette(n)  > 

scytte, 
schutte  1 
schette  /  ' 

scyted. 
schut ) 
schet  / 

shut, 

shut, 

shut. 

4- 

spittan, 

spitte(n), 

spitte, 
spitte, 

spited, 
spit. 

spit, 

spit, 

spit. 

5- 

spnedan, 

sprede(n), 

spread, 

spraedde, 

spredde, 
spread, 

sprseded 

spred. 
spread. 

275.  The  following  verbs  of  this  class  originally 
belonged  to  the  Anglo-Saxon  strong  conjugation; 
hence  only  the  Early  English  forms  nearest  to  the 
modern  forms  are  given  :  — 


6. 

berste(n), 

berst,  //. 

burster), 

hurste 

hurst, 

burst, 

burst. 

7- 

lete(n), 

let         \ 
lette      J  : 

i 

leten. 

let, 

let, 

let. 

8. 

scheden, 

schedde, 

sched 

shed, 

shed, 

shed. 

9.   I  light.      (See  Section  239.) 

Burst  has  developed  also  a  regular  preterite  and  past 
participle  burs  ted,  which  in  the  language  of  slang  is 
frequently  corrupted  into  "  busted." 


Irregular   Weak    Verbs.  371 

276.    The    following  verbs  of  this  class  came  into 
the  language  from  the  Old  Norse  :  — 


10. 

caste  (n), 

caste, 

cast. 

cast, 

cast, 

cast. 

II. 

cutte(n), 

cutte, 

cut. 

cut, 

cut, 

cut. 

12. 

hitte  (n), 

hitte, 

hit. 

hit, 

hit, 

hit. 

13- 

putte(n), 

putte, 

put. 

put, 

put, 

put. 

To  this  list  may  be  added  the  word 

14.  '  stead,'  and  its  compound  '  bestead.' 

Both  of  these  were  apparently  little  used  till  towards 
the  beginning  of  Modern  English,  and  indeed  have 
never  been  common  at  any  time.  Here,  also,  prob- 
ably belongs 

15.  thrust,  thrust,        thrust. 

There  is  a  Middle  English  thresten,  from  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  forces  fia??,  'to  twist';  but  the  Modern  English 
verb  probably  comes  from  the  Norse. 

277.    To  the  Old  French  we  owe  the  two  following 
verbs  of  this  class  :  — 

costed  \  costed  \ 

coste    i  '  cost       > 

cost,  cost. 

hurte,  hurt. 

hurt,  hurt. 


16. 

coste  (n), 

cost, 

'7- 

hurten, 

hurt, 

372  English  Language. 

278.  These  seventeen  verbs  undergo  now  no  change 
of  form,  though  several  of  them  occasionally  exhibited 
full  forms  in  the  earlier  speech.  This  inflection  in 
some  cases  lasted  down  to  the  beginning  of  Modern 
English.  Cutted  and  spitted,  for  example,  can  be 
found  in  the  Middle  English  period,  and  the  past 
participle  casted,  though  used  as  an  adjective,  occurs 
in  Shakspeare.1  But  there  are  a  number  of  these 
verbs  which,  by  the  beginning  of  the  Modern  English 
period,  had  usually  developed  full  regular  forms  along- 
side of  the  contract  ones,  and  both  have  continued  in 
use  to  the  present  time.  Most  of  them  belonged  to 
the  Anglo-Saxon  weak  conjugation  ;  but  of  those  in  the 
following  list  that  do  not,  slit  is  from  the  Anglo-Saxon 
strong  conjugation,  and  quit  comes  from  the  Old 
French.  Of  the  remaining  two,  split  apparently  did 
not  make  its  entry  into  the  language  till  about  the 
sixteenth  century,  though  on  this  point  there  is  no 
certainty.  It  is  possibly  of  Scandinavian  origin.  The 
second  one,  bet,  is  even  of  later  origin,  and  its  ety- 
mology is  doubtful. 

279.  In  the  following  list  are  comprised  verbs 
which  have  full  regular  forms  for  the  preterite  and 
past  participle,  along  with  those  in  which  the  principal 
parts  are  the  same  throughout :  — 


I.    cnyttan, 

cnytte, 

cnyted. 

knitte(n), 

knitte, 

knitted  ") 
knit         > 

knit, 

knit        ") 

knitted  >  ' 

knit          \ 
knitted     < 

1 

lltitry 

I '.,  act  iv.  scene  1. 

Irregular   Weak    Verbs. 


373 


2 

swaetan, 
swete(n), 

swrette, 
swette, 

swatted, 
swet. 

sweat, 

sweat 
sweated 

}■ 

sweat 
sweated 

3- 

waiJtan, 
wete(n), 

wiette, 
wette, 

waited, 
wet. 

wet, 

wet 
wetted 

}• 

wet 
wetted 

4- 

i 

hwettan, 

whette(n), 

h  wette, 
whette, 

hweted. 
whet. 

whet, 

whetted 
whet 

}• 

whetted 
whet 

5- 

screadian, 
schrede(n), 

shred, 

screadode, 
schredde, 
shred         1 
shredded  /  ' 

screadod 
schred. 
shred 
shredded 

6. 

slitten, 

slitte, 

slit. 

slit, 

slit 
slitted 

}■ 

slit 
slitted 

7- 

quite(n), 
quit, 

quitte, 
quitted 
quit 

}• 

quit. 

quitted 

quit 

8. 

split, 

split 
splitted 

}• 

split 
splitted 

9- 

bet, 

bet 
betted 

1 

r 

bet 
betted 

280.   To  this  list  may  be  added  the  somewhat  rare 
verb 


10.  wont, 


wonted 
wont 


wonted 
wont 


374  English  Language. 

This  verb  is  derived  from  the  past  participle  of  the 
verb  won,  '  to  dwell,'  which  is  now  obsolete,  though 
occasionally  appearing  in  poetry-1  The  original  in- 
flections were  as  follows  :  — 

wunian,  wunode,  wunod. 

wonie(n),  wonede,  wont. 

The  past  participle  wont  used  as  a  present  developed 
its  preterite  wonted  as  early  as  the  sixteenth  century. 
The  verb  is  still  in  use,  though  it  cannot  be  called 
common. 

281.  In  this  list  of  ten  verbs  with  double  preterites 
and  participles  it  is  largely  a  matter  of  individual  pref- 
erence which  of  the  two  shall  be  adopted.  The 
number,  indeed,  might  be  somewhat  extended,  if  the 
various  forms  that  have  appeared  at  various  times  in 
the  writings  of  good  authors  were  to  be  included. 
The  contracted  form  wed  for  wedded,  especially  in  the 
past  participle,  is  not  infrequent.  In  the  first  period  of 
Modern  English,  lift  for  lifted  \s  sometimes  met  with,2 
and  other  unusual  forms,  either  full  or  contract,  are 
occasionally  to  be  found  in  our  literature.  Plight  for 
plighted  would   be   an    illustration.     In   the  principal 

1  Out  of  the  ground  uprose, 
As  from  his  lair,  the  wild  beast,  where  he  worn 
In  forest  wild,  in  thicket,  brake,  or  den. 

MILTON,  Paradise  Lost,  VII.,  457. 
-  Lift,  as  the  preterite,  LODGE  and  GREENE'S  Looking- Glass  fir 
London  inGREl  NE'S  Works, ed.  of  1861,  page  123;  as  a  past  participle 
in  MARLOWE'S  Tamburlaine  /.,  act  ii.  scene  1;  Peele'S  David 
and  Bethsabe,  ed.  of  1861,  page  468 ;  CARTWRIGHT'S  Lady  Errant, 
art  i.  scene  2;  Shadwell's  Libertine,  act  i. 


Irregular   Weak    Verbs.  375 


"<s 


parts  of  those  here  included,  the  forms  which  seem  to 
be  preferred  have  been  first  mentioned.  Yet  on  a 
question  of  varying  usage,  and  of  usage  that  varies  at 
different  periods,  no  absolute  rule  can  be  laid  down 
which  will  be  accepted  by  all. 

282.  Up  to  this  period  the  anomalous  verbs  of  the 
weak  conjugation  that  have  been  mentioned,  not  only 
retain  the  same  vowel  through  all  their  principal  parts, 
they  retain  also  the  same  length  of  that  vowel.  We 
now  come  to  the  discussion  of  the  anomalous  verbs 
of  the  second  division  (261).  In  these  the  vowel  of 
the  stem  was  either  shortened  in  the  preterite  and  the 
past  participle,  or  it  was  changed  entirely.  According 
to  these  two  sorts  of  change,  the  verbs  of  this  division 
may  be  arranged  in  two  classes. 

283.  The  first  class,  which  shortened  the  stem- 
vowel,  is  a  development  of  the  Middle  and  Modern 
English  periods  ;  for  no  such  shortening  was  known  to 
the  Anglo-Saxon.  It  seems  to  have  been  partly  due 
to  the  analogy  of  the  vowel-change  that  went  on  in 
verbs  of  the  strong  conjugation,  the  influence  of  which 
could  hardly  fail  to  make  itself  felt  to  some  extent  on 
verbs  of  the  weak  conjugation,  particularly  on  those 
that  did  not  assume  the  full  regular  preterite  ending, 
-ed(e).  This  class  may  be  conveniently  subdivided 
further  into  two  groups.  The  first  will  embrace  the 
verbs  whose  stems  ended  in  -d  or  -/,  especially  the 
former.  These  dropped  the  -de  or  -te  of  the  termina- 
tion, like  the  class  to  which  spread  and  set  belonged 
(274)  ;  but  they  differed  from  them  in  having  the 


376 


English  Language. 


vowel  of  the  preterite  shorter  than  that  of  the  infinitive 
or  of  the  present  tense. 

284.  The  list  embraces  the  following  verbs,  in 
which  the  principal  parts,  as  found  in  Anglo-Saxon,  in 
Early  English,  and  in  Modern  English,  are  given  :  — 


I. 

bledan, 

bledde, 

bleded. 

blede(n), 

bledde, 

bled. 

bleed, 

bled, 

bled. 

2. 

bredan, 

bredde, 

breded. 

brede(n), 

bredde, 

bred. 

breed, 

bred, 

bred. 

3- 

fedan, 

fedde, 

feded. 

fede(n), 

fedde, 

fed. 

feed, 

fed, 

fed. 

4- 

lajdan, 

lsklde, 

lceded. 

lede(n), 

ledde, 

led. 

lead, 

led, 

led. 

5- 

metan, 

mette, 

meted. 

mete(n), 

mette, 

met. 

meet, 

met. 

met. 

6. 

redan, 

redde, 

reded. 

rede(n), 

redde, 

red. 

read, 

read, 

read. 

7- 

spedan, 

spedde, 

speded. 

spede(n), 

spedde, 

sped. 

speed, 

sped, 

sped. 

8. 

tidian, 

tidde, 

tided. 

(be)tide(n), 

(be)ticjde, 

(be)tid. 

(be)  tide, 

(be)tid, 

(be)tid. 

285.    The  compound  betide  does  not  go  back  earlier 
than  the  Old  English  period,  but  the  simple  verb  is 


Irregular   Weak    Verbs.  377 

found  in  Anglo-Saxon,  and  was  in  constant  use  for 
several  centuries  later.  In  this  list  should  etymologi- 
cally  be  reckoned  chide,  chid,  and  hide,  hid ;  but  for 
the  reasons  given  in  section  175,  it  seems  best  to 
regard  them  as  strong  verbs.  There  is  also  another 
verb,  heat,  which,  in  Anglo-Saxon  and  Early  English, 
was  conjugated  as  follows  :  — 

hretan,  hcette,  hated. 

hete(n),  hette,  het. 

This  in  Elizabethan  English  has  a  preterite,  or  at 
least  a  past  participle,  heat?  along  with  the  full  form 
heated,  and  this  still  is  heard  in  the  language  of 
low  life. 

286.  Two  other  verbs,  light  and  plead,  which  are 
also  inflected  regularly,  can  be  added  to  this  list. 
One  of  them  presents  the  following  forms  in  Anglo- 
Saxon  and  Middle  English  :  — 

lihtan, 

lighte(n), 

light, 

In  this  word,  or  rather  in  these  words,  are  repre- 
sented two  Anglo-Saxon  verbs,  one  meaning  'to  shine,' 

1  If  it  once  be  heat  in  flames  of  fire. 

Greene,  Alphonsus,  ed.  1861,  page  232. 
The  iron  of  itself  though  heat  red  hot. 

Shakspeare,  King  John,  act  iv.  scene  i. 
He's  heat  to  the  proof. 

Webster,  Northward  Ho,  act  i.  scene  1, 


lihte, 

lihted. 

lightede  * 
lighte      J  ' 

lighted  -> 

light      i 

fit, 

lit. 

378 


Engl  is  Ji  Language. 


and  the  other  '  to  alight.'  Though  different  in  origin, 
they  have  nearly  the  same  inflections.  The  con- 
tracted forms  are  much  more  common  with  the 
modern  verb  derived  from  the  first  than  with  the 
one  derived  from  the  second.  In  the  present  literary 
use  lit  is  almost  entirely  confined  to  light  in  the  sense 
of  '  to  illuminate,'  though  in  colloquial  speech  it  is 
sometimes  used  with  the  other.  Plead  is  from  the 
Old  French,  and  the  preterite  plead  is  far  less  com- 
mon in  the  literary  language  than  pleaded,  though  /// 
is  perhaps  as  common  as  lighted.  It  is  also  to  be 
added  that  betide  sometimes  exhibits  the  full  regular 
form  bedded,  and  that  speed  also  in  certain  senses 
has  speeded. 

287.  The  second  group  of  verbs  whose  stems  have 
come  to  be  shortened  in  the  preterite  and  past  parti- 
ciple (283)  embraces  all  those  words  which  end  in  other 
letters  than  -d 'or  -/.  They  are  nineteen  in  number,  and 
nearly  one-half  of  them  belonged  to  the  strong  conju- 
gation in  Anglo-Saxon.  The  first  list  will  include 
those  which  have  been  weak  verbs  through  all  periods 
of  their  history. 

1.  dielan, 
dele(n), 

deal, 

2.  dreman, 
dreme(n), 

dream, 


dselde, 

dseled. 

delede 

}■ 

deled  1 
delt    J 

delte 

dealt, 

dealt. 

dremde, 

dremed. 

dremede 

}■ 

dremed. 

dremde 

dreamt, 

dreamt. 

Irregular   Weak    Verbs 

}■ 


379 


3- 

felan, 

felde, 

fele(n), 

felede 
felte 

feel, 

felt, 

4- 

hyran, 

hyrde, 

here(n), 

herde, 

hear, 

heard, 

5- 

cepan, 

cepte, 

kepe(n), 

kepte, 

keep, 

kept, 

6. 

hlinian, 

hlinode, 

lene(n), 

lenede, 

lean, 

leant, 

7- 

lrcfan, 

la-fde, 

leve(n), 

levede 
lefte 

leave, 

left, 

8. 

maenan, 

msende, 

mene(n), 

mende, 

mean, 

meant, 

9- 

reafian, 

reafode, 

reve(n), 

revede 

refte 

(be)  reave, 

reft, 

:o. 

sceoian, 

scode, 

shoe(n), 

shode, 

shoe, 

shod, 

}. 


feled. 
feled. 

felt. 


hyred. 

herd. 

heard. 

ceped. 

kept. 

kept. 

hlinod. 

(lened). 
leant. 

l^fed. 
.leved    \ 
left         J 
left. 

msened. 

mened  ) 
ment  J 
meant. 

reafod. 
reved 


"I  reved    "I 

i'  reft       J" 


ret 
reft. 

scod. 

shod, 
shod. 


To  these  may  be  added  the  forms  of  kneel  and  sweep 
of  which  the  Anglo-Saxon  originals  are  doubtful :  — 


38o 


EnglisJi  L  a  nguagi : 


ii.    knele(n), 

knelede, 

kneled. 

kneel, 

knelt, 

knelt. 

12.    swepe(n), 

swepede, 

sweped. 

sweep, 

swept, 

swept. 

13.    cleve(n)  (II.), 

clevede, 

cleave, 

cleft, 

14.    crepe(n)  (II.), 

crepede 

}. 


288.  From  the  strong  conjugation  in  Anglo-Saxon 
the  following  anomalous  verbs  of  the  weak  conjuga- 
tion have  been  derived.  The  Roman  numerals  indi- 
cate the  class  to  which  they  originally  belonged  :  — 


cleved  ) 
cleft  J 
cleft. 

crepid  \ 
crept  i 
crept. 

fled, 
fled. 

leped  ) 
lept  / 
leapt. 

lost, 
lost. 

slept. 

slept. 

weped  1 
wept  > 
wept. 


creep, 

15.  fle(n)  (II.), 
flee, 

16.  lepe(n)  (VII.), 
leap, 

17.  lose(n)  (II.), 
lose, 

18.  slepe(n)  (VII.), 
sleep, 

19.  wepe(n)  (VII.), 
weep, 


crepte 
crept, 

fledde, 
fled, 

lepede  1 
lepte  i 
leapt, 

loste, 
lost, 

slepte, 
slept, 

wepede  \ 
wepte     i 

wept, 


To  the  verbs  of  this  list  the  strong  verb  shoot  (180) 
has  become  so  thoroughly  assimilated  that  with  the 


Irregular  Weak    Verbs.  381 

practical  disappearance  of  its  past  participle  shotten 
it  might  fairly  be  reckoned  among  the  anomalous 
verbs  of  the  weak  conjugation. 

289.  In  a  large  number  of  these  words,  Middle 
and  Modern  English  have  developed  full  forms  along- 
side of  the  contracted  ones,  and  some  of  the  former 
are  even  more  common  than  the  latter.  Especially 
is  this  true  of  the  earlier  period  of  Modern  English. 
The  full  forms  kneeled,  dreamed,  and  leaned  are  the 
only  ones  found  at  all  in  our  version  of  the  Bible,  or 
in  Shakspeare,  or  in  Milton's  poetry.  Leapt,  though 
going  back  to  the  Old  English  period,  is  far  from 
being  as  common  as  leaped.  The  simple  verb  reave, 
outside  of  the  past  participle,  is  now  little  used  ;  and 
the  compound  bereave  has  almost  invariably  bereaved 
in  the  preterite,  though  bereft  is  occasionally  met  with. 
Cleaved,  moreover,  is  nearly  as  common  as  cleft.  Full 
regular  forms  of  some  of  the  others  have  occasionally 
made  their  appearance.  On  the  other  hand,  both 
Ben  Jonson  and  Wallis  in  their  grammars  give  dread 
and  even  tread  as  preterites  in  good  use  in  the  seven- 
teenth century,  and  the  latter  says  that  beeped  and 
weeped,  though  by  no  means  so  common  as  kept  and 
wept,  were  nevertheless  employed. 

290.  The  vowel-variation  in  these  words  is  a  devel- 
opment of  the  later  speech.  It  is  unknown  to  the 
earliest  period  of  the  language.  At  that  time,  nearly 
every  one  of  the  above-mentioned  verbs  that  existed 
in  it  and  was  inflected  weak  had  a  long  vowel  in  all 
the  principal  parts,  as  the  primitive  forms  show  dis- 


382  English  Language. 

tinctly.  In  Anglo-Saxon  there  were,  however,  more 
than  a  score  of  verbs  of  the  weak  conjugation,  in 
which  there  was  a  real  variation  of  vowel  in  the  pret- 
erite. Some  of  these  have  disappeared  from  the 
tongue  altogether,  others  have  become  perfectly  regu- 
lar. In  the  following  list  will  be  found  the  verbs  of 
this  second  class  (282)  which  survive,  with  their  origi- 
nal and  transitional  forms.  Through  all  periods  it  will 
be  observed  that  in  the  preterite  and  past  participle 
the  termination  was  added  directly  to  the  stem,  with- 
out an  intervening  vowel ;  and  as  these  verbs  are  con- 
stantly confounded  by  many  with  those  of  the  strong 
conjugation,  the  endings  will  be  distinctly  marked. 
291.    The  list  comprises  the  following  words  :  — 

1.  bringan,  broh-te,  broh-t. 
bringe(n),                      brough-te,  brough-t. 
bring,                              brough-t,  brough-t. 

2.  bycgan,  boh-te,  boh-t. 
buyen,  bough-te,  boh-t. 
buy,                                  bough-t,  bough-t. 

3.  secan,  soh-te,  soh-t. 

seche(n)  )  ,    ,  ,  . 

,\y  >,  sough-te,  sough-t. 

seke(n)    > 

seek.         1 

be-seech/'  S°Ugh"t'  ^^ 

4.  sellan,  seal-de,  seal-d. 
selle(n),                         sol-de,                      sol-d. 
sell,                                 sol-d,                        sol-d. 

5.  tellan,  teal-de,  teal-d. 
telle(n),                            tol-de,  tol-d. 
tell,                                    tol-d,  tol-d. 


Irregular   Weak  Verbs.  383 


6. 

(>encan,  '  to  think,' 

Jioh-te, 

Jjoht. 

thenke(n), 

though-te, 

though-t. 

think, 

though-t, 

though-t. 

7- 

byncan,  '  to  seem,' 

}»uh-te, 

buh-t. 

(me)thinketh, 

(me)  though- 

te. 

(me)thinks, 

(me)  though- 

•t. 

8. 

wyrcan, 

worh-te, 

worh-t. 

worche(n), 

wrough-te, 

wrough-t. 

work, 

wrough-t, 

wrough-t. 

292.  To  these  eight  may  be  added  two  others : 
One  is  teach,  in  which,  in  Anglo-Saxon,  there  was 
no  variation  of  the  vowel,  though  there  was  the  usual 
change  of  consonants  found  in  those  verbs  whose 
stems  terminated  in  a  guttural.  The  other  is  catch, 
which  comes  from  the  Old  French.  The  following  are 
the  forms  :  — 


9.   tiecan, 

tish-te, 

taeh-t. 

teche(n), 

taugh-te, 

taugh-t. 

teach, 

taugh-t, 

taugh-t. 

0.    cacche(n), 

cau;-te, 

cau?-t. 

catch, 

caugh-t, 

caugh-t. 

293.  To  these  words  may  be  added  two  others, — 
reach  and  stretch,  —  which  belonged  originally  to  this 
same  class.  In  Modern  English  they  have  conformed 
thoroughly  to  the  regular  inflection,  though  in  its  first 
period  the  original  one  not  infrequently  appears.  The 
following  are  the  forms  these  verbs  exhibited  in  Anglo- 
Saxon  and  in  Early  English  :  — 


384  English  Language. 

raecean,  rshte,  rceht. 

reche(n),  raughte,  raught. 

streccean,  streahte,  streaht. 

strecche(n),  straughte,  straught. 

294.  In  Shakspeare  raught  occurs  four  times  as  a 
preterite,  readied  not  at  all ;  but  the  participial  forms 
raught  and  reached  both  appear,  each  once.  In  other 
Elizabethan  dramatists,  also,  raught  occurs  not  infre- 
quently, though  it  cannot  be  found  in  our  version  of 
the  Bible.  The  form  straught  became  obsolete  much 
earlier,  though  it  has  affected  the  variant  of  distracted) 
from  the  Latin  distractus,  causing  it  to  assume  the 
form  distraught.  To  the  list  may  also  be  added  the 
verbs  pitch  and  shriek,  some  of  whose  older  and 
irregular  forms  made  their  appearance  as  late  as  the 
seventeenth  century.  The  former  in  Early  English 
was  conjugated  as  follows  :  — 

picche(n),  pighte,  P'ght. 

The  latter  as  follows  :  — 

shrike(n),  shrighte,  shright. 

In   both  cases  the  past  participle  was  the  form  that 
maintained  itself  most  vigorously. 

295.  Several  of  the  verbs  of  this  class  have  developed 
regular  forms  alongside  of  the  irregular  ones.  Selled 
and  tcllcd,  for  instance,  go  back  certainly  to  the  four- 
teenth century,  and  can  he  met  with  in  the  sixteenth, 
and  perhaps  later.     During  the  whole  history  of  Mod- 


Irregular 


Weak  Verbs. 


385 


ern  English  catched  and  teached,  which  go  back  to 
the  Old  English  period,  have  maintained  themselves 
alongside  of  caught  and  taught,  though  the  present 
tendency  is  to  regard  them  as  improper.  Beseechcd 
made  its  appearance  in  the  sixteenth  century,  and  is 
still  in  use,  though  far  less  common  than  besought. 
On  the  other  hand,  worked  has  largely  displaced 
wrought.  Its  origin  seems  to  be  comparatively  late. 
It  was  certainly  in  existence  in  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury,1 but  apparently  it  was  not  till  the  eighteenth  that 
it  began  to  be  generally  employed. 

296.  This  concludes  the  consideration  of  the  two 
general  classes  of  anomalous  verbs  of  the  weak  conju- 
gation. There  remain  two  verbs  which  have  under- 
gone contractions  peculiar  to  themselves.  They  are 
have  and  make,  and  the  manner  in  which  the  existing 
forms  have  been  developed  out  of  the  preceding  ones 
can  be  traced  in  the  following  scheme  :  — 


habban, 


habbe(n) 
have( 
han 
have, 


n)     I, 


hsefde, 

havede  -j 
hadde   / ' 

had, 


hrefed    "» 
gehrefd  J 

haved 
had 

had. 


}■ 


macian, 

make(n), 

make, 


macode, 
makede  > 
made       ) 
made, 


macod. 
maked 
mad 
made. 


The  compound  behave  does  not,  however,  follow  its 

1  It  is  mentioned  by  Wallis  in  his  Grammar. 


386  English  Language. 

primitive,  but  is  now  inflected  regularly  ;  though  at  one 
period  it  formed  the  preterite  behad. 

297.  One  other  verb  remains  to  be  mentioned. 
This  is  clothe,  which  has  for  its  original  two  Anglo- 
Saxon  verbs  with  the  same  signification.  One  is 
cladian,  from  which  the  modern  verb  has  developed 
its  regular  inflection  ;  the  other  cliedan,  from  whose 
preterite  cliedde  came  the  Early  English  cladde  and 
the  Modern  English  clad. 

298.  There  are,  furthermore,  two  participial  forms 
that  require  consideration.  One  is  the  contracted  form 
dight,  which  is  now  practically  all  that  is  left  of  the 
Anglo-Saxon  verb  dihian,  '  to  set  in  order,'  in  Early 
English  dihte(n).  The  participle  belongs  rather  to 
poetry  than  to  prose,  and  it  is  rarely  that  any  other 
part  of  the  original  verb  occurs.  The  other  word  is 
fraught.  This  is  the  contract  past  participle  of  the 
Early  English  verb  fraughte(n), —  unknown  to  Anglo- 
Saxon, —  which  verb  in  Modern  English  has  been  sup- 
planted by  its  variant  freight. 

299.  With  the  statement  that  certain  verbs  ending 
in  y  change  this  y  to  i  in  the  preterite,  as  say,  said, 
pay,  paid,  —  which  is  nothing  more  than  an  ortho- 
graphic variation,  —  the  history  of  all  the  irregular 
forms  of  the  weak  verbs  now  existing  has  been  given. 
It  is  possible,  indeed,  that  anomalous  forms  not  men- 
tioned here  may  occasionally  be  found  ;  but,  if  so,  they 
are  all  explainable  according  to  the  analogy  of  the 
various  forms  that  have  been  described. 


The  Strong  Past  Participle.  3cS/ 

PAST    PARTICIPLE    OF    THE    STRONG    CONJUGATION. 

300.  It  is  the  formation  of  the  preterite  that  con- 
stitutes the  fundamental  distinction  between  the  strong 
and  the  weak  verb.  Still  there  is  an  important  and 
well-recognized  difference  between  the  terminations  of 
their  past  participles.  Those  of  the  weak  verb  ended, 
in  the  earliest  period  of  English,  either  in  -d  or  -/,  as 
they  end  now ;  those  of  the  strong  during  that  same 
period  ended  in  -en,  except  in  a  few  instances  where 
the  e  was  syncopated.  The  past  participles  of  both 
conjugations  agreed,  however,  in  often  prefixing  the 
particle  »•<?,  as  is  usually  the  case  in  German  now.  Into 
the  later  history  of  this  form  it  is  necessary  to  enter 
here,  on  account  of  the  relation  it  bore  to  this  part  of 
the  verb. 

301.  In  the  earliest  period  of  the  language  the  parti- 
cle ge  was  prefixed  indifferently  to  nouns,  adjectives, 
pronouns,  adverbs,  and  verbs.  In  the  case  of  the 
adjective  we  still  see  a  survival  of  it  in  the  e  of  enough, 
which  in  Anglo-Saxon  was  ge-noh,  and  finally  assumed 
the  modern  spelling,  after  passing  through  various  tran- 
sitional forms,  among  which  were  i-noh,  i-nouh,  and 
i-nough.  There  was  not,  in  the  case  of  the  verb,  any 
disposition  originally  to  restrict  the  prefix  to  the  past 
participle  ;  but  this  became,  in  Early  English,  the  pre- 
vailing, though  not  absolutely  exclusive,  practice.  But 
the  particle  sometimes  suffered  a  change  of  form  before 
the  Conquest,  which  change,  after  the  Conquest,  be- 
came habitual.     For  ge,  either  y  or  i  is  found  from  the 


388  English  Language. 

twelfth  century  on ;  and  in  the  manuscripts  these  two 
letters  frequently  appear  as  capitals,  For  /.  And  not 
only  was  this  r  or  i  applied  indifferently  to  participles 
of  the  weak  or  of  the  strong  conjugation,  it  was  applied 
with  equal  indifference  to  those  of  foreign  or  native 
verbs. 

302.  It  was  in  the  employment  of  this  prefix  that  a 
marked  distinction  early  showed  itself  in  the  speech 
of  different  parts  of  England.  The  Northern  dialect 
never  made  use  of  it  to  any  extent ;  hardly  even  at  all, 
except  in  the  writers  who  directly  imitated  the  language 
of  Chaucer.  On  the  other  hand,  it  was  a  prevalent,  if 
not  the  prevailing,  practice  to  add  it  to  the  past  parti- 
ciple in  the  dialect  of  the  South.  As  usual,  the  literary 
speech,  the  language  of  the  Midland,  steered  a  middle 
course  between  its  two  neighbors.  During  the  thir- 
teenth and  fourteenth  centuries  it  may  be  said  that 
the  influence  of  the  Southern  dialect  predominated. 
In  the  literature  of  the  Midland  produced  up  to  the 
very  end  of  the  latter  century,  participial  forms  like 
Unit,  ymaked,  isworrt,  ygo,  i  gone,'  ybe,  '  been,'  ydo, 
'done,' are  exceedingly  common.  After  that  period, 
however,  the  influence  of  the  Northern  speech  made 
itself  more  and  more  felt  in  respect  to  the  use,  or 
rather  disuse,  of  this  prefix. 

303.  In  the  fifteenth  century,  the  employment  of  y 
or  /'  with  the  participle  begin  to  be  given  up,  and  in 
the  sixteenth  century  it  practically  disappeared.  It 
occasionally  made  its  appearance  much  later,  and  even 
at  this  day  is  seen  at  times  in  poetry,  especially  in 


The  Strong  Past  Participle.  389 

burlesque,  or  in  imitations  of  the  archaic  style.  One 
noted  instance  of  its  employment  is  found  in  its  addi- 
tion to  the  present  participle  of  the  verb  point,1  in 
Milton's  poem  on  Shakspeare  ;  and  in  the  imitations  of 
the  archaic  style  prevalent  in  Elizabethan  English  it  is 
occasionally  prefixed  to  various  parts  of  the  verb.2  At 
the  present  day  y-clept,  which  is  the  past  participle 
of  the  obsolete  clepe,  '  to  call,'  is  almost  the  sole  repre- 
sentative of  what  was  once  a  widely  extended  usage. 

304.  But  not  only  in  regard  to  this  prefix  to  the 
past  participle  of  either  conjugation,  but  in  regard  to 
the  termination  of  the  strong  past  participle  also,  a 
marked  difference  between  the  two  extreme  dialects 
of  England  arose.  The  speech  of  the  North  evinced 
from  the  outset  a  decided  inclination  to  retain  the  full 
form  -en ;  while,  on  the  other  hand,  the  speech  of  the 
South,  while  retaining  the  e,  was  disposed  to  drop  the 
-n.  This  is  a  distinction  that,  roughly  speaking,  pre- 
vailed ;  it  is  not  to  be  insisted  upon  as  one  that  was 
invariably  observed. 

305.  The  result  of  these  two  agencies  —  the  drop- 
ping of  the  prefix  y  or  i  by  the  Northern  dialect,  the 
dropping  of  the  final  -n  by  the  Southern  —  was  that 
the  past  participles  of  verbs  of  the  strong  conjugation 
showed   themselves   in   two    forms   in   Early   English. 

1  Under  a  sXax-ypointing  pyramid.  —  Line  4. 

2  With  gaping  jaws,  that  by  no  means  ymay 
Be  satisfied  from  hunger  of  her  maw. 

SACKVILLE,  induction  to  Mirror  for  Magistrates, 
stanza  51. 


39Q 


English  Language. 


These  are  constantly  exemplified  in  the  Midland  lit- 
erature of  the  fourteenth  century,  and  have  left  every- 
where traces  of  themselves  in  the  development  of  the 
modern  speech.  The  difference  between  these  can  be 
best  comprehended  by  an  inspection  of  the  following 
examples  :  — 


Past  Participle, 

Past  Participle, 

nfinitive. 

Northern  Dialect. 

Southern  Dialect. 

write, 

writen, 

y-write. 

sing, 

sungen, 

y-sunge. 

steal, 

stolen, 

y-stole. 

swear, 

sworen, 

y-swore. 

beat, 

beten, 

y-bete. 

306.  The  existing  past  participle  of  the  strong  con- 
jugation has  in  all  cases  followed  the  Northern  dialect, 
and  rejected  the  prefix  y ;  but  in  consequence  of  the 
difference  that  prevailed  in  the  representation  of  the 
original  termination  -en,  that  ending  came  into  Mod- 
ern English  with  a  good  deal  of  variation.  These 
diversities  can  be  arranged  under  the  following  heads, 
though  in  a  few  cases  the  differences  are  rather  ortho- 
graphical than  real.  It  is,  of  course,  understood  that 
only  verbs  which  have  retained  the  original  past  par- 
ticiple come  here  under  consideration. 

307.  (1)  Verbs  of  Class  III.  (190)  have  lost  the 
termination  -en  entirely.  The  apparent  exceptions  to 
this  rule  —  bounden,  drunken,  foughien,  shrunken,  and 
sunken,  to  which  may  be  added  the  archaic  holpen  — 
have  already  been  considered  (202).  It  is  only  to  be 
added,  that  at  the  beginning  of  the  Modern  English 


The  Strong  Past  Participle.  391 

period  these  few  full  forms  were  more  widely  used 
than  at  present.  This  is  the  only  class  of  strong  verbs 
which  showed  the  disposition  to  drop  this  ending 
entirely,  but  this  it  did  throughout.  The  new  verbs 
which  were  adopted  into  it,  like  ring  and  fling,  aban- 
doned their  past  participles  rungen  and  flungen  as 
readily  as  sing  and  begin  did  sungen  and  begunnen. 

308.  Outside  of  this  class,  but  two  of  the  original 
strong  verbs  can  be  found  which  exhibit  the  tendency 
to  give  up  the  -en  wholly.  One  is  shoot,  of  Class  II., 
of  which  the  full  form  shottcn  is  obsolete  as  a  par- 
ticiple, and  the  other  is  come,  of  Class  IV.,  which  has 
given  up  comen  (208).  The  participial  form  still 
retains,  indeed,  the  final  -e  in  writing ;  but  in  pro- 
nunciation the  termination  has  been  entirely  dropped. 

309.  (2)  Some  verbs  have  retained  the  termina- 
tion, though  in  certain  of  them  the  e  is  syncopated ; 
but  this  is  the  only  contraction  they  undergo,  as  they 
do  not  drop  the  -;/.  They  come  from  all  classes  ex- 
cept the  third  (190).  The  following  is  the  list  of 
past  participles  in  which  the  original  ending  now 
rarely  or  never  disappears  :  — 

CLASS   I.  CLASS    IV. 

1.  driven.  7.    born(e). 

2.  risen.  8.    shorn. 

3.  shriven.  9.    torn. 

4.  smitten. 

5.  stricken.  CLASS   V. 

10.    given. 
CLASS   II.  II.    lain. 

6.  flown.  12.    seen. 


392 


English  L  a  nguage. 


CLASS   VI. 

13.  drawn. 

14.  forsaken. 

15.  shaken. 

16.  slain. 

17.  sworn. 

18.  taken. 


CLASS  VII. 

19.  blown. 

20.  blown. 

21.  fallen. 

22.  grown. 

23.  known. 

24.  thrown. 


To  this  last    class    also  may  be  added    the    archaic 
ho  I  den. 

310.  (3)  Between  these  groups  stands  a  third, 
which  has  double  forms  for  the  past  participle, — 
one  with  the  ending  -//,  the  other  without  it.  A 
still  further  distinction  might  be  made  in  the  fact 
that  some  words  drop  -en  entirely,  others  drop  only 
-n ;  but  this  is  a  distinction  existing  merely  on 
paper,  as  this  final  -e  is  never  sounded.  The  follow- 
ing is  the  list  of  verbs  which  exhibit  double  forms  of 
the  past  participle,   with  the   classes   to  which    they 


11. 

chosen, 

chose. 

cloven, 

clove. 

frozen, 

froze. 

sodden, 

sod. 


belong  :  — 

I. 

1 .    bite, 

bitten,    -> 
bit         i 

5- 

choose, 

2.    ride, 

ridden,   •> 
rid.          < 

6. 

cleave, 

3.    slide, 

slidden,  ■> 
slid.         J 

7- 

freeze, 

4.    write, 

written,  •> 
writ.        i 

8. 

seethe, 

The  Strong  Past  Participle.  393 


IV.  gotten,   1 

13-    get, 

got. 


Droken,  -i  " 

9.    break,                     \  spoken,  -, 

broke-     j  14.    speak,                      I 

.  ,  spoke.     ) 

stolen,    ->  r 

10.    steal,                        V  trodden,-, 

stole.      J  I5.    trcad,                     'I 

trod.        > 


V. 


bidden, 


16.    weave, 


trod 

woven 

wove 


'} 


DKtcien,  -1 
II.    bid,  > 

bid.         i  VII. 

eaten,     -i  beaten, 


12.    eat, 


eat. 


-1  Deaten,  -i 

17  •    ^         beat.        \ 


311.  This  list  is  true  only  of  the  present  usage. 
Even  during  the  Modern  English  period  there  are 
several  other  verbs  —  notably  stride  and  smite  —  that 
have  exhibited  shortened  forms  besides  the  full  ones. 
To  it  may  be  also  added  the  originally  weak  verbs 
cMde  and  hide  (175),  which  have  in  the  participle  the 
double  forms  chidden,  chid,  and  hidden,  hid,  respec- 
tively. In  regard  to  most  of  these  verbs  it  is  sufficient 
to  say  that  the  full  forms  are  now  ordinarily  preferred. 
The  shorter  ones  belong  generally  to  the  colloquial 
rather  than  to  the  literary  speech.  Still  no  rigid  in- 
variable rule  can  be  laid  down  in  regard  to  the 
employment  of  either,  and  the  widest  diversity  of 
usage  has  existed,  and  still  continues  to  exist,  in 
respect  to  many  of  them. 

312.  In  the  case  of  the  verbs  which  have  just  been 
considered,  it  is  the  original  past  participle  that  has 


394 


English  Language. 


continued  to  exist,  whether  in  a  full  or  in  an  abbrevi- 
ated form.  But  there  are  a  number  of  verbs  in  which 
this  original  participle  has  been  discarded  entirely. 
Its  place  has  been  supplied  in  two  ways.  Just  as  there 
were  strong  verbs  in  which  the  form  of  the  participle 
made  its  way  into  the  preterite,  so  also,  in  a  few  in- 
stances, the  form  of  the  preterite  made  its  way  into  the 
past  participle.  The  following  is  the  list  of  verbs  in 
which  this  transition  of  the  preterite  into  the  participle 
has  occurred,  and  is  still  in  use  ;  the  older  forms,  when 
entirely  obsolete,  are  printed  in  Italics  :  — 


nfinitive. 

New  Passive  Participle. 

Old  Passive  Participle 

hold, 

held, 

holden. 

drink, 

drank, 

drunk. 

sit, 

sat, 

sitlen,  \ 
sit.        i 

stand, 

stood, 

slondiii. 

wake, 

wuke, 

waken. 

(a)  bide, 

(a)bode, 

(ci)bidden. 

shine, 

shone, 

shinen. 

313.  It  was  in  the  sixteenth  century,  particularly  in 
the  latter  part  of  it,  that  most  of  these  transitions  were 
effected.  The  existence  of  the  etymologically  correct 
form  shinen  is  perhaps  doubtful.  At  any  rate  the 
weak  form  shined  was  for  a  time  much  more  common 
than  that  of  the  >trou^  preterit'-.  Drank,  especially 
in  the  last  century,  threatened  to  drive  out  drunk 
entirely;  but,   though   still   in  good  use,   the  strictly 


The  Strong  Past  Participle.  395 

correct  form  is  coming  to  be  generally  preferred. 
Almost  the  same  statement  can  be  made  of  ate, 
though  this  as  a  participial  form  has  never  been  as 
common  as  drank. 

314.  These  words  in  the  list  just  given  are,  how- 
ever, merely  the  relics  of  what  was  once  a  general 
movement,  which  has  been  almost  entirely  arrested. 
In  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries  the  use  of 
the  preterite  for  the  past  participle  was  common  in  a 
large  number  of  verbs  in  which  it  is  no  longer  seen. 
The  literature  of  the  Elizabethan  period,  and  later, 
abounds  in  instances  of  the  use  of  rode  for  ridden,  of 
forsook  for  forsaken,  of  shook  for  shaken,  of  drove  for 
driven,  of  took  for  taken,  and  of  wrote  for  written. 
There  are  several  other  verbs  in  which  a  similar  use  of 
the  preterite  occurs  with  more  or  less  of  frequency. 
In  some  instances,  it  looked  as  if  they  might  displace 
the  regular  forms,  just  as  stood  has  driven  out  the  ety- 
mologically  correct  stonden.  They  lasted  down  fre- 
quently  to  a  late  period,  and  are  occasionally  to  be 
met  with  now.  Wrote,  for  illustration,  is  very  common 
for  written  in  the  literature  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
and  even  began  for  begun  and  rose  for  risen  can  be 
then  found  in  good  use.1     But  though  some  of  these 

1   As  examples  which  might  be  almost  indefinitely  increased,  the 

following  are  given  :  — 

Labienus  — 
This  is  stiff  news  — hath  with  his  Parthian  force, 
Extended  Asia  from  Euphrates: 
His  conquering  banner  shook  from  Syria 
1  0  i  \  dia  and  to  Ionia. 

Sijakspeare's  Antony  and  1 .  scene  2. 


39^  English  Language. 


'&"»"    -^<-'"s'^S' 


preterites  occasionally  appear  now  as  participles,  the 
language  at  the  present  time  is  averse  to  their  employ- 
ment, and  is  disposed  more  and  more  to  use  exclu- 
sively the  etymologically  correct  form  (223). 

315.  In  the  case  of  two  verbs  which  belong  both  to 
the  weak  and  to  the  strong  conjugation,  the  place  of 
the  strong  participle  has  been  taken  by  the  weak. 
These  are  crow  and  cleave,  'to  adhere,'  which  now 
present  the  following  forms  :  — 

Infinitive.  Preterite.  Past  Participle, 

cleaved 


.  .    >  cleaved  1 

cleave  (1.).  ,  \ . 

clave       J 

,       .  crew        1 

crow  (vii.),  \ , 

crowed    > 


cleaved, 
crowed. 


The  strong  participle  crown  is  sometimes  found  in 
poetry,  but  the  form  is  archaic. 

316.  There  remain  to  be  brought  together  a  num- 
ber of  verbs  at  first  inflected  strong,  which,  though 
going  over  to  the  weak  conjugation,  continue  still  to 

1  I  low  am  I  mistook  in  you. 

A  ferry  Wives  of  Windsor,  act  iii.  scene  3. 
To  unfold 
What  worlds  or  what  vast  regions  hold 
The  immortal  mind,  that  hath  forsook 
Her  mansion  in  this  fleshly  nook. 

Milton,  II  Penseroso,  line  91. 

He  had  rose  pretty  early  this  morning.  —  Fielding,  Joseph 
Andrews,  I.,  ch.  16. 

llor  tears  which  had  long  since  began  to  wet  her  handkerchief.— 
lb.,  IV.,  ch.  11. 


The  Strong  Past  Participle. 


397 


retain  their  original  past  participle.  They  have,  in 
consequence,  double  forms.  There  are  nine  of  these, 
as  will  be  seen  in  the  following  list :  — 


1.  grave  (vi.), 

2.  hew  (VII.), 

3.  lade  (vi.), 

4.  mow  (VII.), 

5.  shape  (vi.), 

6.  shave  (vi.), 

7.  sow  (vil.), 

8.  swell  (in.), 


graved, 

hewed, 

laded, 

mowed, 

shaped, 

shaved, 

sowed, 

swelled, 


} 


} 


graved, 

graven. 

hewed,    \ 

hewn. 

laded, 

laden. 

mowed,  \ 

mown.     I 

shaped, 

shapen 

shaved, 

shaven. 

sowed, 

sown 

swelled 

swollen 


:} 
} 


To  this  list   belongs,  also,  the   Early  English   strong 
verb  :  — 


9.  rive  (1.), 


rived, 


rived, 
riven 


:  } 


To  these  may  perhaps  be  properly  added  gnaw  and 
wax,  which  occasionally  exhibit  the  strong  participial 
forms  gnawn  and  waxen  (231).  For  burs  ten,  carven, 
and  molten  see  Section  204. 

317.  It  has  already  been  pointed  out  (246)  that 
the  weak  verbs  show,  strew,  and  saw  developed  strong 
past  participles  which  are  now  in  good  use,  and  that 


398  English  Language. 

hidden  and  chidden  are  strong  participles  formed  by 
adding  -en  to  the  preterites  of  weak  verbs  (175). 
These  forms,  which  are  in  their  origin  corruptions,  are 
now  established  as  correct.  They  may  have  come  into 
the  language  at  the  outset  from  the  Northern  dialect, 
which,  as  we  have  seen,  was  inclined  to  retain  the  full 
form  of  the  past  participle.  For  not  only  did  the 
Northern  dialect  so  prefer  the  termination  -en  as  to 
retain  it  in  the  cases  where  it  strictly  belonged,  it  also 
manifested  the  disposition  to  add  it  to  words  to  which 
it  did  not  properly  belong.  Certain  weak  verbs,  such 
as  cast,  cut,  put,  thrust,  mainly  of  Scandinavian  origin, 
added  the  ending  -en  to  the  weak  passive  participle, 
which  by  contraction  had  become  the  same  as  the 
infinitive,  as  it  is  in  Modern  English.  This  produced 
such  forms  as  casten,  cutten,  putten,  thrusten  or 
throssen.  Of  a  precisely  similar  formation  is  the 
verbal  adjective  boughten,  not  infrequent  in  certain 
districts  of  America,  and  found  occasionally  in  the 
literature  of  England. 

318.  It  cannot  be  said  that  such  forms  as  these  have 
ever  made  their  way  to  any  extent  beyond  the  dia- 
lects in  which  they  originated  ;  but  scattered  through 
the  whole  of  Modern  English  literature  are  occasional 
instances  of  the  substitution  of  a  strong  participial 
termination  for  that  of  a  weak  one,  usually  for  the 
sake  of  the  rhyme.  This  is  true,  at  least,  of  its  earli- 
est period.  The  participial  forms  sain  for  said,  be- 
reaven  for  bereaved,  sweaten  for  sweat{ed} ,  paven  for 
paved,  arc  examples  which  show  the  existence  of  this 


The  Strong  Past  Participle.  399 

tendency,  even  though  the  forms  have  not  been 
adopted.1  But  a  most  marked  instance  belongs  to 
the  present  century.  This  is  the  past  participle 
proven  for  proved.  The  word  is  derived  from  the 
French,  and  like  all  other  foreign  verbs  has  until  the 
present  century  been  inflected,  in  literary  use,  accord- 
ing to  the  weak  conjugation  throughout.  But  the 
strong  participial  form  proven  has  made  its  way  from 
the  Scottish  sub-dialect  of  the  Northern  dialect  into 
the  language  of  literature,  and  not  only  has  grown 
common,  but  promises  to  become  universally  ac- 
cepted ;  for  it  is  widely  employed  by  many  of  the 
best  modern  writers,  and,  in  particular,  occurs  in  the 
prose  of  Lowell,  and  frequently  in  the  later  poems  of 
Tennyson. 

319.  Two  other  participial  forms  are  worthy  of 
attention.  The  verb  bear  has  two  forms,  born  and 
borne,  of  which  the  latter  is  the  one  in  general  use, 
while  the   former  is  limited  to   the  passive   sense  of 

1  Both  thou,  and  all  the  rest  of  this  thy  train, 
Shall  well  repent  the  words  which  you  have  sain. 

Greene,  Alphonsus,  ed.  of  1861,  page  231. 

Where  sense  is  blind,  and  wit  of  wit  bereaven. 
Terror  must  be  our  knowledge,  fear  our  skill. 

Daniel,   Civil  Wars,  Book  I.,  stanza  123,  ed.  of  1602. 

Grease,  that's  siueaten 
From  the  murderer's  gibbet,  throw 
Into  the  flame. 

Shakspeare,  Macbeth,  act  iv.  scene  1. 

Rise,  rise,  and  heave  thy  rosy  head 
From  thy  coxaX-paven  bed. 

Milton,  Comus,  line  886. 


400  English  Language. 


'  brought  forth.'  This  distinction  between  the  two 
did  not  become  accepted  till  towards  the  end  of  the 
last  century.  In  the  early  period  of  Modern  English 
lie  had  also  a  past  participle  lien  along  with  lain ; 
but  this  no  longer  exists  save  in  poetry,  and  even  in 
that  is  rare. 

PAST    PARTICIPLE    OF   THE    WEAK    CONJUGATION. 

320.  The  past  participle  of  weak  verbs  was  formed 
in  the  primitive  Indo-European  by  adding  to  the  stem 
the  suffix  ta.  Of  this  the  consonant  appeared  in  the 
early  Teutonic  tongues  as  ///,  /,  or  d.  In  Anglo-Saxon 
it  was  d ' ;  and,  as  the  vowel  of  the  suffix  had  disap- 
peared, it  was  d  only  that  was  added.  This  was 
joined  on  directly  to  the  connective  o  of  the  second 
weak  conjugation,  as  luf-o-d,  '  loved  ' ;  or  to  the  con- 
nective e  of  the  first  weak  conjugation,  as  dem-e-d, 
'deemed.'  But  sometimes  this  connective  e  was 
dropped,  in  which  case  d  often  became  /.  In  general, 
also,  the  history  of  the  past  participle  of  the  weak 
conjugation  is,  since  the  fifteenth  century,  the  same 
as  the  history  of  the  preterite,  when  the  dropping  of 
the  final  -e  by  that  part  of  the  verb  brought  about 
in  them  both  identity  of  form.  The  former  was  con- 
sequently subjected  to  precisely  the  same  changes 
that  befell  the  latter.  To  this  there  is  one  slight 
exception. 

321.  Either  after  the  analogy  of  verbs  whose  past 
participle  is  precisely  the  same  in  form  as  the  present 
tense,  as  hit,  hurt,  or  because  they  were  made  to  re- 


Number  and  Person  of  the    Verb.       401 

semble  their  Latin  primitives,  a  number  of  verbs  in 
the  Middle  English  period  did  not  always  add  -d  to 
form  the  past  participle  ;  as  consummate  (Lat.  con- 
summat-us)  for  consummated,  create  (Lat.  creat-us) 
for  created,  pollute  (  Lat.  pollut-us)  for  polluted.  These 
forms  without  final  -d  belong  mostly  to  words  that  are 
derived  from  Latin  verbs  of  the  first  conjugation ;  but 
they  are  not  limited  to  them.  The  usage  extended 
down  to  the  Modern  English  period,  and  can  hardly 
be  said  to  have  been  abandoned  before  the  end  of  the 
seventeenth  century.  Certain  writers  are  remarkable 
for  their  fondness  for  such  forms.  As  a  general  rule, 
they  are  employed  in  an  adjectival  sense  •  but  even 
then  their  participial  character  is  plainly  apparent. 
The  participial  adjective  situate  for  situated,  common 
in  legal  phraseology,  is  a  survival  of  this  usage. 

NUMBER    AND    PERSON. 

322.  As  regards  the  three  primitive  numbers,  the 
Gothic  was  the  only  one  of  the  Teutonic  languages  that 
retained  the  dual  of  the  verb  ;  but,  even  in  that,  it 
was  confined  to  the  first  and  second  persons.  At  the 
time  that  language  was  committed  to  writing,  the  third 
had  disappeared  ;  and,  in  order  to  say  that  "  they  two  " 
had  done  anything,  the  plural  form  had  to  be  used. 
In  English  the  verb,  through  all  the  stages  of  its  his- 
tory, knows  only  of  the  singular  and  plural  numbers  : 
no  trace  of  a  dual  appears  in  its  earliest  monuments. 

323.  A  commonly  received  theory  as  to  the  origin 
of  the  personal  endings  is,  that  the  personal  pronoun, 


4-02  English  Language. 

as  the  subject  of  a  verb,  was  originally  placed  after 
it,  and  not  before  it,  as  now;  just  as  if  we,  instead  of 
saying  1 hate ;  they  hate,  should  say,  hate  I,  hate  they,  and 
so  on  for  the  other  persons.  According  to  this  theory 
the  pronouns,  appended  to  the  stem  of  the  verb, 
gradually  united  with  it  so  as  to  form  one  word  ;  as 
even  in  Early  English,  for  illustration,  thinkest  thou  or 
sayest  thou  often  appears  as  one  word,  thinkestow, 
seistow.  Thus  joined  to  the  verb,  they  came  at  last 
to  be  regarded  as  an  inseparable  part  of  it,  as  really 
belonging  to  it.  Then  they  were  used  to  form  the 
inflection  of  the  tense  ;  but  as  the  personal  pronouns 
originally  appended  to  the  persons  to  denote  the  sub- 
ject were  different,  the  endings  were,  at  first,  necessarily 
different  in  all  cases. 

324.  When  these  pronouns  had  become  so  thor- 
oughly united  with  the  verb  as  to  form  one  word,  the 
recollection  of  their  original  pronominal  character  was 
certain  in  time  to  pass  away.  They  came  to  be  looked 
upon  simply  as  an  integral  part  of  the  inflection  of  the 
verb,  and  not  as  separate  words  or  syllables  denoting 
the  subject.  As  this  feeling  grew  predominant,  a  per- 
sonal pronoun  was  frequently  put  before  the  verb  as 
its  subject.  This  naturally  became  more  and  more 
common  as  the  sense  of  the  original  pronominal  nature 
of  the  personal  ending  became  fainter  and  fainter. 
When  it  had  become  a  constant  practice  to  employ 
the  personal  pronoun  as  the  subject  of  the  verb,  and 
usually  preceding  it,  the  necessity  of  an  ending  to 
denote  the  person  was    gone  ;    that  was  denoted    by 


Personal  Endings  of  the    Verb.  403 

the  personal  pronoun  which  was  the  subject.  The 
value  of  distinct  terminations  for  the  persons  was 
accordingly  destroyed. 

325.  If  the  theory  be  true,  it  was  inevitable  that 
under  such  circumstances  the  terminations  should  be 
confounded,  and,  if  much  confounded,  that  many  of 
them  in  course  of  time  should  disappear.  This  has 
been  fully  exemplified  in  the  history  of  the  Teutonic 
languages,  and  of  our  own  in  particular.  In  Gothic 
there  is  a  distinct  termination  for  each  of  the  three 

persons  of  the  plural  of  the  present  indicative, ;// 

for  the  first  person,  -th  for  the  second,  and  -nd  for  the 
third.  In  Anglo-Saxon  this  diversity  of  endings  had 
been  given  up  in  this  number  of  this  tense.  The 
terminations  of  the  first  and  third  persons  had  been 
entirely  abandoned,  and  -th,  the  termination  of  the 
second  person,  had  become  the  common  termination 
of  the  three. 

326.  The  result  was  just  as  marked  in  the  case  of 
the  present  subjunctive.  In  this  mode  the  Gothic 
still  preserved  the  distinction  of  the  various  persons 
by  the  endings.  In  the  Anglo-Saxon,  however,  while 
there  was  a  distinction  of  form  between  the  singular 
and  the  plural,  the  three  persons  of  the  singular  had 
all  the  same  termination,  as  had  likewise  the  three 
persons  of  the  plural  the  same.  A  similar  statement 
can  be  made  about  the  plural  of  the  preterite.  Here 
the  older  tongue,  the  Gothic,  still  preserved  the  dis- 
tinction of  persons  by  the  endings,  while  in  Anglo- 
Saxon    but    one    of   these    original    endings   survived. 


4°4  English  Language. 

This  was  strictly  the  termination  of  the  third  person, 
which  was  extended  to  the  other  two.  But  barren  of 
these  endings  as  is  our  earliest  speech  when  compared 
with  the  Gothic,  it  is  rich  when  compared  with  what 
we  have  to-day.  The  history  of  the  tenses  will  show 
the  steady  loss  in  this  respect  that  has  overtaken  the 
inflection. 

TENSES   OF   THE   VERB. 

327.  The  English,  like  all  the  Teutonic  tongues, 
has  but  two  simple  tenses,  —  the  present  and  the 
preterite.  About  them  as  centres  have  been  devel- 
oped verb-phrases  which  express  the  ideas  and  rela- 
tions conveyed  by  the  inflectional  forms  to  be  found 
in  other  languages.  The  use  of  these  two  tenses  is 
far  more  limited  in  Modern  English  than  it  was  in  the 
ancient  speech.  The  present  then  generally  expressed 
also  the  ideas  for  which  we  now  use,  not  merely  the 
future  but  the  future  perfect ;  while  the  preterite 
denoted  what  is  now  conveyed  by  the  imperfect,  the 
perfect,  and  the  pluperfect.  These  forms  have,  more- 
over, undergone  changes  so  various,  that  it  will  be 
necessary  to  consider  each  one  of  the  two  simple 
tenses  by  itself. 

THE   PRESENT   TENSE,    INDICATIVE   AND    SUBJUNCTIVE. 

328.  The  following  paradigms  of  the  strong  verb 
singan,  '  to  sing,'  and  of  the  verbs  deman,  '  to  judge,' 
and  erian,  '  to  plough,'  of  the  first  weak  conjugation, 
and  locian,  '  to   look,'    of  the    second,  will  show  the 


The  Present   Tense. 


405 


inflection  of  the  present  indicative  and  subjunctive  in 
the  Anglo-Saxon  period. 


32Q.   Singular.     Indicative.  Subjunctive, 
sing-e,  sing-e, 

sing-est,       sing-e, 
sing-eft.        sing-e. 


sing-aft.        sing-en. 


Singular.     Indicative.     Subjunctive. 


luc-ie, 

loc-ast, 

loc-aft. 


16c-ie, 
loc-ie, 
loc-ie. 


Indicative.     Subjunctive. 
dem-e,         dem-e, 
dem-est,     dem-e, 
dem-eft.      dem-e. 


dem-aft.      dem-en. 

Indicative.  Subjunctive. 

er-ie,  er-ie, 

er-est,  er-ie, 

er-eft.  er-ie. 


loc-iaft.         loc-ien. 


er-iaft. 


er-ien. 


330.  In  these  paradigms  it  will  be  seen  that  the 
stem  of  the  strong  verb  singan  is  sing ;  that  the  con- 
nective is  a  weakened  to  e  in  the  singular  of  the 
indicative  and  in  both  numbers  of  the  subjunctive  ; 
and  that  the  personal  endings,  so  far  as  they  have 
preserved,  are  -st  of  the  second,  and  -d  of  the  third 
person  singular,  -d  of  the  plural  indicative,  and  -?i  of 
the  plural  subjunctive.  Most  verbs  of  the  first  weak 
conjugation  do  not  differ  here  from  the  strong  verb  in 


406  Engl  is  Ji  Language. 

their  inflection.  In  the  second  weak  conjugation  it 
will  be  noticed  that  the  place  of  the  connective  o  has 
been  taken  by  the  connective  ia,  which,  however,  is 
only  seen  pure  in  the  plural  indicative. 

331.  This  is  the  common  inflection  in  the  Anglo- 
Saxon,  as  it  is  exhibited  in  the  classical  dialect,  the 
West-Saxon.  But,  after  the  Norman  Conquest,  the 
present  tense  of  the  verb  exhibited  marked  differences 
in  the  three  great  dialects  of  the  English  speech,  that 
arose  and  developed  literatures  of  their  own  during 
the  thirteenth  and  fourteenth  centuries.  These  dif- 
ferences are  most  marked  in  the  plural  number.  If 
we  represent  the  present  tense  of  singen  as  it  would 
be  inflected  in  each  of  these  dialects,  we  should  have 
displayed  the  following  forms  :  — 


Singular. 

Southern. 

Midland  (East). 

Northern. 
1  st  Form.     2d  Form. 

I 

sing-e, 

sing-e, 

sing,         sing-e  (s), 

Thou 

sing-est, 

sing-est, 

sing-es,    sing-es, 

He 

sing-eth. 

sing-eth. 

sing-es.    sing-es. 

Plural. 

Hi  or  They 

sing-eth. 

sing-en. 

sing.         sing-es. 

What  is   true   of  singen  is  also  true  of  verbs  of  the 
weak  conjugation. 

332.  It  is  evident  at  a  glance  that  the  Southern 
forms  are  much  nearer  the  classic  Anglo-Saxon  than 
either  of  the  others  ;  and  that  the  Midland  are  pre- 
cisely the  same  as  the  Southern  in  the  singular  num- 
ber.    As  regards  the  Northern,  it  is  to  be  remarked 


The  Present   Tense.  407 

that  the  forms  in  -s  go  back  to  a  period  before  the 
Conquest,  although  the  scantiness  of  Northumbrian 
literature,  and  the  uncertainty  attending  the  date  of 
composition  of  the  little  that  has  been  preserved, 
make  positive  statements  hazardous  as  to  the  time  of 
the  transition  of  the  final  -d  into  -s,  or  the  extent  of 
usage  of  the  latter. 

333.  It  will  be  observed,  however,  that  there  are 
two  sets  of  Northern  forms.  One  of  these,  though 
going  back  to  the  thirteenth  century,  is  far  nearer 
Modern  English  than  either  of  those  found  in  the 
Midland  or  the  South.  In  general,  it  may  be  said 
of  the  two,  that,  when  the  verb  has  for  its  subject  a 
personal  pronoun  directly  preceding  it,  it  uses  the  first 
form  ;  but  in  other  cases  the  forms  in  -s  are  usually 
though  not  invariably  found.  In  consequence,  in  the 
Northern  English  of  the  thirteenth  and  fourteenth 
centuries,  they  think  and  men  think  would  ordinarily 
be  represented  by  thei  think  and  men  thinkes;  and 
this  is  still  a  peculiarity  of  the  Scotch  dialect. 

334.  It  is  the  Midland  form,  however,  that  has 
been  the  ruling  one  in  Modern  English.  It  has,  it  is 
true,  been  seriously  affected  by  the  two  dialects  bor- 
dering upon  it.  During  the  Early  English  period  the 
influence  of  each  one  of  the  three  upon  the  one  near- 
est it  was  plainly  perceptible.  The  Eastern  Midland 
has  not  unfrequently  the  plural  ending  -th,  and  even 
occasionally  the  Northern  third  person  singular  in  -s. 
This  latter  form  was  far  more  common  in  the  West 
Midland  division  of  the  Midland  dialect,  upon  which 


408  English  Language. 

the  speech  of  the  North  exerted  in  certain  details  a 
powerful  influence.  But  the  later  history  of  these 
forms  will  be  confined  to  the  history  of  the  present 
tense  of  the  East  Midland  dialect. 

335.  We  begin  with  the  first  person  of  the  singu- 
lar. Even  in  the  earliest  period  this  had  usually 
dropped  the  personal  ending.  The  connective  e, 
which  had  consequently  become  the  termination,  was 
also  given  up  in  the  Middle  English  period.  In  this, 
the  Northern  dialect  preceded  the  Midland,  and, 
doubtless,  largely  influenced  it.  This  ending  -e  really 
disappeared  from  all  verbs ;  but  it  was  retained  in 
the  spelling  of  many,  though  never  sounded  in  pro- 
nunciation, as  in  love  and  give;  and  this  has  con- 
tinued the  practice  down  to  the  present  time.  The 
Northern  dialect  also  added  -s  at  times  to  the  first 
person,  probably  from  a  false  analogy  with  the  other 
persons,  which  all  had  this  ending.  This  occasionally 
appears  in  English  literature  as  late  as  the  sixteenth 
century,  though  in  many  cases  it  is  hard  to  tell  whether 
the  termination  was  due  to  design  or  to  typographical 
error. 

336.  The  second  person,  through  all  the  periods 
of  English,  outside  of  the  distinctively  Northern  dia- 
lect, has  regularly  ended  in  -si,  and  there  has  never 
been  a  time  when  the  supremacy  of  this  termination 
has  been  seriously  shaken.  Still,  the  form  in  -s  ap- 
peared even  in  West-Saxon,  and  after  the  Norman 
Conquest  it  was  the  regular  ending  of  the  Northern 
dialect.     As  late  as  the  Elizabethan  period,  this  same 


The  Present   Tense.  409 

form  will  be  found  occasionally  alongside  of  -st,  as 
can  be  seen  in  the  following  examples  :  — 

Thou  art  not  thyself; 
For  thou  exists  on  many  a  thousand  grains 
That  issue  out  of  dust. 

Shakspeare,  Measure  for  Measure,  act  iii.  scene  1. 

My  sharpness  thou  no  less  disjoints. 

Jonson,  Epigram  58 

But  in  such  cases  the  final  /was  almost  always  dropped, 
in  order  to  avoid  the  crowding  together  of  numerous 
consonants,  caused  by  the  previous  dropping  of  the 
connective  e.  In  the  examples  above  given,  the  full 
forms  would  be  exist-e-st,  disjoint-e-st. 

337.  The  suffix  -d  of  the  third  person  singular  was 
in  the  Anglo-Saxon  period  frequently  changed  into  -s 
in  the  North  of  England  ;  and,  in  the  works  still  ex- 
tant in  the  Northumbrian  dialect,  forms  in  -3"  and  -s 
stand  side  by  side.  By  the  thirteenth  century,  how- 
ever, the  latter  had  completely  supplanted  the  former 
in  this  division  of  English  speech.  Outside  of  it,  the 
ending  -th  was  regularly  employed,  not  only  during  the 
Old  English,  but  during  the  Middle  English,  period. 
Chaucer  almost  invariably  has  the  third  person  singu- 
lar terminating  in  -th,  except  when  he  designedly 
represents  the  dialect  of  the  North.  The  very  few 
instances  in  which  he  otherwise  has  the  ending  -s  (as 
in  "The  Boke  of  the  Duchesse,"  line  257)  are  due 
to  the  necessity  of  rhyme.1 

1  Instances  occur,  however,  in  the  East  Midland  dialect,  in  which 
the  forms  in  -s  are  found  where  the  necessity  of  rhyme  cannot  be 


410  Englisli  Language. 

338.  But  in  the  sixteenth  century  the  termination 
in  -s  gradually  made  its  way  from  the  Northern  dialect 
into  the  language  of  literature.  After  the  middle  of 
that  century,  it  became  with  each  succeeding  year 
more  common.  For  about  a  hundred  years,  the  forms 
in  -s  and  -th  lasted  side  by  side  with  apparently  little 
general  difference  in  their  usage.  Books  and  writers 
naturally  varied.  The  authorized  version  of  the  Eng- 
lish Bible  does  not  employ  the  third  person  singular 
in  -s.  Ben  Jonson  does  not  even  mention  it  in  his 
grammar,  although  it  is  of  constant  occurrence  in  his 
writings.  But,  by  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury, the  form  in  -s  had  become  the  prevailing  one, 
and  has  since  that  time  become  nearly  the  exclusive 
one.  It  is  the  English  Bible  that  has  kept  alive  the 
form  in  -th ;  but  it  is  rarely  employed  now,  save  in 
poetry  and  in  the  solemn  style.  During  the  eighteenth 
century  occasional  efforts  were  made  to  revive  it,  and 
the  form  hath  in  particular  was  frequently  employed 
instead  of  has.     But  the  practice  did  not  continue. 

339.  The  Midland  plural  -en  is  of  uncertain  origin. 
By  some  it  is  regarded  as  being  nothing  more  than  an 
intrusion  of  the  subjunctive  ending  -en  into  the  indica- 
tive, helped  by  the  fact  that  this  same  termination  was 
also  that  of  the  preterite.     To  whatever  due,  it  was  a 

alleged,  as  in  the  following  extracts  from  LANGLAND'S    Vision  of 
Piers  Plowman,  Text  15:  — 

And  as  his  loresman  leres  hym,  bileueth  and  troweth. 

Passus  xii.,  183. 

Thus  the  poete  preues  that  the  pecok  for  his  fcthercs  is  reuerenced. 

Passus  xii.,  260. 


The  Present   Tense.  411 

distinctive  characteristic  of  the  Midland  dialect,  and 
showed  itself  as  early  as  the  end  of  the  twelfth  century. 
The  Southern  speech,  as  has  been  seen,  varied  little 
from  the  classic  Anglo-Saxon,  and  formed  its  plural  in 
-ctli,  the  connection  a  or  ia  of  the  latter  having  in 
all  cases  become  e  in  the  former.  The  Northern,  hav- 
ing often  changed  the  -ad  into  -as  before  the  Norman 
Conquest,  adopted  after  that  event  the  form  -es  or  -s 
exclusively,  or  dropped  the  termination  altogether. 
These  three  terminations  of  the  plural  lasted  side  by 
side  for  centuries  ;  and,  though  strictly  denoting  differ- 
ent dialects,  they  were  to  some  extent  interchanged. 
As  a  result,  there  are  but  few  old  English  and  still 
fewer  Middle  English  manuscripts  in  which  at  least 
two  forms  are  not  represented,  though  one  is  naturally 
much  more  common  than  the  other. 

340.  It  is  from  the  Midland  form  in  -en,  however, 
that  the  Modern  English  has  strictly  been  derived. 
Still  it  is  evident  that  the  Northern  forms,  existing  as 
early  as  the  thirteenth  century,  without  any  termina- 
tions at  all,  must  have  had  great  influence  in  bringing 
about  the  result  we  now  see.  The  -n  began  to  be 
widely  dropped,  even  early  in  the  Middle  English 
period  ;  and  this  in  time  was  followed  by  the  abandon- 
ment of  -e  in  most  cases.  Tellen,  for  example,  became 
telle,  then  tell.  The  vowel  naturally  disappeared  first 
in  pronunciation ;  and  its  disuse  in  pronunciation  was 
generally,  though  not  invariably,  followed  by  its  dis- 
use in  orthography.  The  dropping  of  the  -//  and  the 
dropping  or  retention  in  the  spelling  of  the  -e,  caused 


412  English  Language. 

all  the  persons  of  the  plural  to  assume  the  same  sound 
and  form  as  the  infinitive  and  the  first  person  of  the 
singular.  It  has  already  been  stated '  that,  according 
to  Ben  Jonson,  this  -en  was  employed  until  the  time  of 
Henry  VIII.  "  But  now,"  he  adds,  "whatsoever  is  the 
cause,  it  hath  quite  grown  out  of  use,  and  that  other 
so  generally  prevailed,  that  I  dare  not  presume  to  set 
this  afoot  again  ;  albeit,  to  tell  you  my  opinion,  I  am 
persuaded  that  the  lack  hereof,  well  considered,  will 
be  found  a  great  blemish  to  our  tongue." 

341.  The  termination  -en  is  occasionally  found 
through  the  whole  of  the  sixteenth  century  ;  but  it 
appears  as  an  avowed  archaism,  not  as  a  form  in  con- 
stant and  current  use.  It  is,  therefore,  limited  to  the 
language  of  poetry.  In  the  latter  part  of  this  century, 
a  great  impulse  was  given  to  its  employment  by  the 
practice  and  authority  of  Spenser,  who  introduced  it 
largely  into  his  writings.  In  this  custom  he  was  fol- 
lowed for  a  time  by  no  small  number  of  admirers  and 
imitators.  By  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  century 
it  had.  however,  disappeared  almost  entirely  from  lit- 
erature of  any  kind.  It  was  regularly  revived  in  the 
numerous  imitations  of  Spenser  that  were  produced 
in  the  eighteenth  century,  such,  for  instance,  as  Thom- 
son's "Castle  of  Indolence"  (a.d.  1748).  As  a  natural 
result,  it  was  often  misused, — a  fate  which  had  occa- 
sionally befallen  it  in  the  sixteenth  century.  Even 
then  we  find  it  sometimes  appended  to  the  first  person, 
producing  such  forms  as  I  /oven,  I  passen,  —  forms 

1  See  page  152. 


The  Present    Tense.  413 

which  have  never  been  actually  used  by  anybody  in 
any  period.  Errors  of  this  kind,  however,  were  alto- 
gether more  frequent  in  the  eighteenth  century. 

342.  The  Northern  plural  in  -s  lasted  in  reality  to 
a  much  later  date  than  the  Midland  form  in  -en.  In 
the  prose  literature  of  the  sixteenth  century  it  is  far 
from  uncommon, -and  it  can  be  found  even  later,  in 
the  seventeenth.  These  statements  are  especially  true 
of  the  third  person ;  the  first  and  second  with  this 
ending  are  by  no  means  frequent,  though  occasionally 
found.  But  there  are  more  than  two  hundred  plurals 
in  -s  to  be  met  with  in  Shakspeare's  plays,  though  these 
are  changed  wherever  possible  in  modern  texts,  and 
can  only  be  found  by  consulting  the  original  editions. 
In  some  instances  the  metre  has  required  their  reten- 
tion;1 in  others  the  rhyme,  as  in  the  following  song 
from  the  third  scene  of  the  second  act  of  "Cymbe- 
line":  — 

Hark  !   hark  !   the  lark  at  heaven's  gate  sings, 

And  Phoehus  gins  arise, 
His  steeds  to  water  at  those  springs 

On  chalic'd  flowers  that  lies. 

The  plural  in  -s  is  by  no  means  confined  to  Shak- 
speare,  however,  but  is  in  fairly  frequent,  though  hardly 
what  can  be  called  general,  employment  during  the 
whole  Elizabethan  period.  By  the  middle  of  the 
seventeenth  century,  however,  it  had  gone  out  of 
literary  use.  The  language  of  low  life,  however, 
retains  to  some  extent  this  form  to  the  present  day. 

1  See  page  129. 


414  English  Language. 

343.  The  Southern  plural  in  -th  was  never  so  com- 
mon as  the  Northern  in  -s,  but,  so  far  as  literature 
is  concerned,  may  be  said  to  have  lasted  somewhat 
later.  With  the  writers  of  the  Elizabethan  period  it 
is  largely  confined  to  the  two  forms  doth  and  hath, 
which  occur,  however,  with  a  good  deal  of  frequency, 
though,  as  in  the  case  of  the  Northern  forms,  they 
are  usually  made  in  modern  editions  to  conform  to 
modern  grammar.  Specimens  of  the  usage  can  be 
seen  in  the  following  extracts  :  — 

Ladies  and  tyrants  never  laws  respectctk. 

Daniel,  Delia,  Sonnet  xxxi.  (early  editions). 

By  it  doth  grow 
About  the  sides  all  herbs  which  wretches  use, 
All  simples  good  for  medicine  or  abuse. 

Fletcher,  Faithful  Shepherdess,  act  ii.  scene  3. 

344.  In  Anglo-Saxon  a  contracted  form  existed  in 
the  second  and  third  persons  of  the  present  singular, 
confined  to  verbs  whose  stems  ended  in  -d,  -t,  or  -s. 
It  is  exemplified  in  the  following  paradigm  of  rldaii, 
'  to  ride  '  :  — 

1 .  ic     rid-e, 

2.  fiu  rkl-est,  or  rist, 

3.  he    rid-e'o",    or  rit. 

These  contract  forms,  especially  in  the  third  person, 
lasted  long  after  the  Conquest.  Through  the  whole 
of  the  Old  and  Middle  English  periods  they  are 
constantly  to  be  met  with,   as  bit  from  biddctii,  rit 


The  Present   Tense.  415 

from  ridetli,  sit  from  sitteth,  rist  from  riseth,  glit 
from  glidcth,  stant  from  stardeth.  By  the  beginning 
of  the  Modern  English  period,  the  full  forms  had 
generally  taken  their  place  ;  or  perhaps  it  would  be 
better  to  say  they  were  displaced  by  the  form  ending 
in  -s.  The  verb  list,  meaning  '  please,'  still  continues 
to  show  in  the  modern  language  the  contracted  form 
list,  along  with  the  forms  listeth  or  lists. 

345.  It  is  hardly  necessary  to  say  that,  in  all  the 
early  periods  of  the  language,  there  are  many  varia- 
tions from  the  forms  that  have  been  here  given.  The 
connective  e  is  often  syncopated  ;  it  is  replaced  often 
by  y  or  i ;  the  -t/i  of  the  endings  frequently  appears  as 
-/  or  -d;  and  numerous  other  variations  could  be  men- 
tioned which  need  here  no  more  than  a  general  refer- 
ence, as  they  have  had  no  influence  upon  the  forms 
existing  in  the  modern  speech. 

346.  The  history  of  the  present  subjunctive  forms 
is  essentially  the  same  as  of  those  of  the  indicative. 
As  in  the  Midland  dialect,  both  possessed  in  the  plural 
the  same  ending  -en,  all  that  has  been  said  of  that 
number  of  the  latter  will  also  apply  to  the  former. 
The  disappearance  of  the  -n  from  both  modes  took 
place  at  the  same  time,  as  did  also  the  disappearance 
of  the  -e  in  those  cases  where  it  was  dropped  from  the 
spelling  at  all.  It  is  only  in  the  second  and  third 
persons  of  the  singular  that  the  subjunctive  forms 
differ  at  all  from  those  of  the  indicative  ;  and  the 
second  person  is  so  little  employed,  that  now  the  only 
marked  difference  of  inflection  is  in  the  third  person. 


41"  English  Language. 

It  is  mainly  owing  to  these  two  modes  assuming  almost 
the  same  inflections  throughout  that  the  distinct  shades 
of  thought  once  expressed  by  the  subjunctive,  as  con- 
trasted with  the  indicative,  have  practically  disappeared. 
To  denote  these,  the  language  is  now  obliged  to  resort 
to  other  methods,  the  discussion  of  which  belongs  to 
syntax  exclusively. 

THE    PRETERITE. 

347.  As  it  is  the  method  of  forming  the  preterite 
which  constitutes  the  fundamental  distinction  between 
the  weak  verb  and  the  strong,  it  is  important  to  give 
several  examples  of  the  inflections  of  this  tense.  As, 
furthermore,  the  inflection  of  the  weak  preterite  is 
not  only  simpler  than  that  of  the  strong,  but  has  also 
inlluenced  the  latter  in  the  ending  of  the  second  per- 
son singular,  it  is  the  one  that  will  be  first  considered. 

THE    PRETERITE   OF   THE   WEAK    CONJUGATION. 

348.  For  the  purpose  of  exhibiting  the  inflection 
of  the  weak  preterite,  the  verbs  deman, '  to  deem,'  and 
erian,  '  to  plough,'  of  the  first  conjugation,  will  be 
taken  and  locian  of  the  second.  The  following  are 
the  paradigms  :  — 

Singular.  Indicative.    Subjunctive.  Indicative.  Subjunctive, 

i-    ic  dem-de,       dem-de,  er-e-de,  er-e-de, 

2.  fm  dem-dest,    dem-de,  er-e-dest,  er-e-de, 

3.  he  dem-de.       dem-de.  er-e-de.  er-e-de. 

Plural. 

1.  we  \ 

2.  ge  dem-don.     dem-den.  er-e-don.      er-e-den. 

3.  In    > 


The  Weak  Preterite.  417 


Singular. 

Indicative. 

Subjunctive. 

I.     ic 

loc-o-de, 

loc-o-de, 

2.    Jm 

loc-o-dest, 

loc-o-de, 

3.   he 

16c-o-de. 

loc-o-de. 

Plural. 

i .    we  \ 

2-   ge    \ 

loc-o-don. 

loc-o-den. 

3.    Ai  J 

349.  As  has  been  previously  pointed  out  (255), 
e  became  the  general  connective  of  all  these  verbs  in 
Early  English.  Furthermore,  the  forms  of  the  indic- 
ative and  subjunctive  plural  were  assimilated  by  the 
weakening  of  the  indicative  ending  -on  to  -en.  Then 
followed  one  additional  modification.  The  final  -n  of 
the  plural  was  frequently  dropped,  even  as  early  as  the 
twelfth  century ;  and  this  practice  became  more  and 
more  common  in  the  centuries  which  followed.  By 
the  beginning  of  the  Middle  English  period  it  was  the 
usual,  though  not  invariable,  practice  in  the  Midland 
dialect.  Hence  in  it  the  inflection  of  these  same 
verbs  regularly  assumed,  at  that  time,  the  following 
form  for  the  indicative  :  — 


Singular. 

Singular. 

Singular. 

dem-e-de, 

er-e-de, 

lok-e-de, 

dem-e-dest, 

er-e-dest, 

lok-e-dest, 

dem-e-de. 

er-e-de. 

lok-e-de. 

Plural. 

Plural. 

Plural. 

dem-e-de(n). 

er-e-de(n). 

lok-e-de(n). 

350,    In  the  fourteenth  century  also,  in  this  same 
Midland  dialect,  the  final  -e  of  the  singular  was  more 


4i§  English  Language, 

often  neglected  than  retained  in  the  pronunciation. 
The  disuse  of  it  in  pronunciation  led  to  its  abandon- 
ment in  the  spelling.  In  the  fifteenth  century  it  dis- 
appeared entirely,  as  a  rule,  leaving  the  forms  as  they 
are  now  seen,  though  the  failure  to  treat  the  -ed  as  a 
separate  syllable  did  not  become  the  general  practice 
till  later.  This  same  state  of  things  is  true  of  the 
preterite  plural,  after  it  had  discarded  the  final  -;/,  and 
also  of  the  subjunctive  forms.  In  this  sloughing  off 
of  the  endings,  the  Northern  dialect  had,  as  usual, 
taken  the  lead.  As  early  as  the  thirteenth  century,  it 
not  merely  showed  occasional  instances  of  such  forms, 
as  denied  and  loked  instead  of  denude,  demeden,  and 
lokede,  lokeden  ;  they  were  even  then  the  regular  rule. 

THE    PRETERITE    OF   THE    STRONG    CONJUGATION. 

351.  Of  the  Anglo-Saxon  strong  verbs  the  inflec- 
tion of  the  preterite  of  singan,  '  to  sing,'  of  dnfan, 
'to  drive,'  of  forsacan,  'to  forsake,'  and  of  growan, 
'  to  grow,'  will  be  given.  The  following  are  the  para- 
digms :  — 

Singular.      Indicative.     Subjunctive.  Indicative.      Subjunctive. 

i.    ic  sanJ4'  sung-e,  dial,  drif-e, 

2.  f>u  sung-e,       sung-e,  drif-e,  drif-e, 

3.  he  sang,  sung-e.  draf.  drif-e. 

Plural. 

i.   we  \ 

2.  ge    y       sung-on.    sung-en.  drif-on.        drif-en. 

3-   h\    ) 


The  Strong  Preterite.  419 


Singular.  Indicative.  Subjunctive. 

1.  ic  fursoc,  forsoc-e, 

2.  pit         forsoc-e,     forsoc-e, 

3.  he  forsoc.        forsoc-e. 


ndicative. 

Subjunctive. 

greow, 

greow-e, 

greow-e, 

greow-e, 

greow. 

greow-e. 

Plural. 
i .   we 
2.  ge 
7.   hi 


forsoc-on.  forsoc-en.  greow-on.   greow-en. 


352.  There  are  four  things  to  be  especially  noted 
in  the  Anglo-Saxon  inflection  :  — 

1.  The  personal  endings  have  entirely  disappeared 
from  the  first  and  third  persons  of  the  singular  of  the 
indicative. 

2.  The  termination  of  the  second  person  singular 
of  the  indicative  is  not  -st,  as  in  the  weak  preterite, 
but  is  -e. 

3.  The  vowel  of  the  second  person  singular  is  pre- 
cisely the  same  as  the  vowel  of  all  the  persons  of  the 
plural  indicative,  and  of  all  the  persons  of  both  num- 
bers of  the  subjunctive. 

4.  In  the  preterite  of  all  the  strong  verbs  repre- 
sented by  singan  and  drifan,  the  vowel  of  the  first 
and  third  persons  of  the  indicative  singular  is  different 
from  that  of  the  second  person  of  the  same  number, 
and  from  the  vowel  of  all  the  persons  of  the  plural 
and  of  both  numbers  of  the  subjunctive. 

353.  In  certain  particulars  the  later  history  of  the 
inflections  just  given  is  the  same  as  that  of  the  pret- 
erite of  the  weak  conjugation.     There  was  the  same 


420  English  Language. 

weakening  of  the  ending  -on  into  -en,  and  the  conse- 
quent assimilation  of  the  plurals  of  the  indicative  and 
the  subjunctive.  There  was  the  same  dropping  of  the 
final  -n,  to  be  followed  afterward  by  the  dropping  of 
the  final  -e.  As  the  history  of  the  subjunctive  is  here, 
as  in  the  present  tense,  involved  in  that  of  the  indica- 
tive, it  may  be  disregarded  ;  and  the  indicative  pret- 
erites of  the  four  verbs  may  be  placed  side  by  side,  as 
they  appeared  in  Early  English. 


Singular. 

Singular. 

Singular. 

Singular. 

I.    sang, 

drof, 

forsok, 

grew, 

2.   sung(e), 

driv(e), 

forsok(e), 

grew(e), 

3.   sang. 

drof. 

forsok. 

grew. 

Plural. 

Plural. 

Plural. 

Plural. 

2.  3.  sunge(n). 

drive(n). 

forsoke(n). 

grewe(n) 

354.  The  forms  here  given  are  those  of  an  in- 
flection theoretically  correct,  rather  than  the  ones 
invariably  employed.  The  variations  are,  in  fact,  ex- 
ceedingly numerous.  In  the  second  person  singular, 
the  tendency  toward  uniformity  began  to  make  itself 
felt  in  the  latter  part  of  the  fourteenth  century  ;  and 
the  -est  or  -st  of  the  weak  conjugation  was  sometimes 
substituted  for  the  -e  of  the  strong,  so  that  sunge,  for 
illustration,  was  replaced  by  sang(e)st  or  sung(e)st. 
In  the  fifteenth  century  this  became  the  established 
practice.  It  is  the  distinction,  however,  between  the 
vowel  of  the  first  and  third  persons  of  the  indicative 
singular   and    that  of   all   the   persons    of  the    plural, 


The  Strong  Preterite.  421 

which  is  of  most  importance  in  the  later  history  of  the 
strong  preterite.  To  this  is  due  mainly  the  existence 
of  the  different  forms  which  have  prevailed,  and  to 
some  extent  continue  to  prevail  still. 

355.  Of  the  seventy-eight  Anglo-Saxon  strong  verbs, 
which,  as  we  have  seen  (241),  have  lasted  down  to  our 
time,  nineteen  represented  in  the  paradigms  given 
above  by  forsoc,  'forsook,'  and  greow,  'grew,'  do  not 
exhibit  this  peculiarity ;  but  the  remaining  fifty-nine 
all  possessed  it,  and  in  many  instances  transmitted  it 
to  later  English.  With  the  inflection  before  us,  the 
origin  of  the  varying  forms  that  have  been  or  are  in 
use  can  easily  be  traced.  Let  us  take,  for  illustration, 
the  history  of  the  preterite  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  verb 
singan,  '  to  sing ' ;  for  the  comprehension  of  the  de- 
velopment of  one  verb  involves  that  of  all. 

356.  In  the  earliest  period  of  English,  when  one 
wished  to  say  /  sang,  or  sung,  he  used  the  form  ic 
sang;  when  he  wished  to  say  we  sang,  or  sung,  he 
used  the  expression  we  sungon.  The  plural  preterite 
differed  from  the  singular  by  having  a  termination  -on, 
and  by  change  of  vowel.  After  the  break-up  of 
Anglo-Saxon,  the  first  thing  to  be  affected  was  this 
ending  -on.  In  accordance  with  the  principle  already 
so  often  stated,  the  vowel  0  was  weakened  into  e,  and 
sungon  became  sungen.  But,  along  with  this  weaken- 
ing of  the  vowel,  there  was  also  a  tendency  to  drop 
the  final  -//,  and  sungen  became  snnge.  The  next 
steps  were  to  drop  the  final  -e  in  pronunciation,  and 
then  in  writing ;  and  we  have,  in  consequence,  for  the 


422  English  Language. 

preterite  plural,  the  form  sung.  Hence  there  re- 
mained, as  a  result,  two  forms  for  the  preterite,  —  one 
for  the  singular  and  one  for  the  plural,  — differing  from 
each  other  only  by  a  single  letter,  and  that  letter  a 
vowel. 

357.  It  was  inevitable  that  a  distinction  seemingly 
arbitrary,  and  serving  no  useful  purpose,  should  break 
down  ;  and  this  was  what  happened.  The  confusion 
that  soon  arose  in  the  usage  of  an  uneducated  people, 
would  be  materially  increased  by  the  fact  that  the 
second  person  of  the  singular,  then  much  more  widely 
employed  than  at  present,  had  a  form  different  from  that 
of  the  first  and  third  persons.  After  the  endings  had 
been  dropped,  it  was  impossible  that  these  distinctions 
should  be  permanently  preserved.  They  were  doubt- 
less kept  up  by  individuals  long  after  they  had  dis- 
appeared from  the  language  of  the  great  mass  of  men. 
To  say  /  sang  and  we  sung  was,  probably,  vaguely  felt 
by  many,  and  loudly  maintained  by  some,  to  be  the 
only  correct  usage  ;  even  when,  in  the  ordinary  speech, 
men  had  become  accustomed  to  say  indifferently,  / 
sang  and  we  sang,  or  I  sung  and  we  sung. 

358.  In  particular  verbs,  also,  the  distinction  lasted 
much  later  than  it  did  in  others.  On  this  point  the 
scansion  of  the  verse  makes  it  clear  that  dissyllabic, 
that  is,  plural,  forms  of  certain  preterites  were  required 
when  the  subject  was  in  the  plural,  and  monosyllabic 
ones  when  the  subject  was  in  the  singular.  An  examina- 
tion of  the  best  manuscripts  of  Chaucer's  poetry  leaves 
little  doubt,  that,  with  him,  gan  was  regularly  the  sin- 


The  Strong  Preterite.  423 

gular  of  the  preterite  ;  gunnen,gunne,  or  gonnen,  gonne, 

the  plural.'  The  same  statement  may  be  made  as  to 
his  use  of  shal,  '  shall,'  and  shallen  or  shulle.  The 
exceptions  to  such  use,  by  him,  of  this  tense  of  these 
two  particular  words  are  very  rare,  if  they  can  be  fairly 
deemed  to  exist  at  all.  Still  in  his  time  the  distinction 
between  the  singular  and  the  plural  of  the  preterite  of 
most  verbs  had  broken  down  generally,  and  the  forms 
originally  belonging  to  one  number  were  used  for  both. 
Not  unfrequently,  both  forms  were  used  indifferently 
and  interchangeably.  Hence  arose  a  double  set  of 
preterites,  such  as  drank  and  drunk,  began  and  begun, 
sprang  and  sprung,  rode  and  rid,  wrote  and  writ, 
which  have  been  transmitted  to  Modern  English. 

359.  These  double  preterites  were  far  more  nu- 
merous in  the  Middle  English  period  and  at  the 
beginning  of  Modern  English  than  they  are  now. 
The  tendency  of  the  language  has  been  steadily  to 
reduce  their  number.  Many  forms,  which,  even  in 
the  early  period  of  Modern  English,  were  in  good 
use,  have  now  disappeared  altogether,  or  are  heard 
only  in  the  language  of  poetry  or  of  low  life.  Ben 
Jonson,  in  his  grammar,  gives  lists  of  verbs  that  had 
two  different  forms  for  the  preterite  in  his  time  ;  and, 
in  a  large  proportion  of  them,  one  form  is  now  obso- 
lete or  antiquated.     Attention  has  already  been  called 

1  It  was  ten  of  the  clokke  he  gan  conclude. 

Prologue  to  Man  of  Law's  Tale,  line  14. 

Til  that  the  coles  gonne  faste  brenne. 

Canon's  Yeoman's  Tale,  line  181. 


424  English  Language. 

to  a  number  of  these  belonging  to  Class  I.  (168),  of 
which  this  statement  is  particularly  true.  But  Jonson 
also  gives  to  climb,  of  Class  III.,  the  two  preterites 
clomb  and  climb;  to  fling,  the  preterites  flang  and 
flung;  to  swing,  the  preterites  swang  and  swung;  to 
wring,  the  preterites  wrang  and  wrung,  and,  in  like 
manner,  double  forms  to  many  others. 

360.  In  the  majority  of  cases  in  which  the  verb 
reached  the  Modern  English  period  with  two  pret- 
erites, one  form  came  from  the  original  singular  and 
one  from  the  original  plural.  This  we  have  just  seen 
exemplified  in  the  case  of  sang  and  sung.  The  lan- 
guage shows,  however,  an  increasing  aversion  to  the 
retention  of  these  double  forms.  They  have  been 
steadily  lessening  from  the  sixteenth  century  to  the 
present  time,  and,  from  present  indications,  are  des- 
tined  ultimately  to  disappear,  at  least  from  common 
usage.  Yet  there  remain  a  number  of  verbs  which  con- 
tinue to  have  two  forms  for  the  preterite.  They  all 
belong  to  the  third  or  the  first  class,  and  are  given  in 
the  following  list,  with  the  Anglo-Saxon  originals  added 
in  parentheses. 


Infinitive. 

Form  from  the  Singular. 

Form  from  the  Plural. 

drink, 

drank  (dranc), 

drunk  (drunc-on) . 

gin, 

-gan  (gan), 

-gun  (gunn-on). 

shrink, 

shrank  (scranc), 

shrunk  (scrunc-on). 

sing, 

sang  (sang), 

sunjj  (jung-ori). 

sink, 

sank  (sane), 

sunk  (jsunc-on). 

slink, 

slank  (sin nc), 

slunk  (slunc-on). 

The  Strong  Preterite.  425 


Infinitive. 

Form  from  the  Singular, 

Form  from  the  Plural. 

spring, 

sprang  {sprang) , 

sprung  (sprung-ori). 

stink, 

stank  {shine), 

stunk  (stunc-on). 

swim, 

swam  {swam), 

swum  (szvumm- on) . 

ride, 

rude  (rad), 

rid  (rid-on).' 

write, 

wrote  (wrat), 

writ  (writ-ori). 

361.  Ring,  when  it  went  over  to  the  strong  conju- 
gation in  the  Old  English  period,  followed  the  example 
of  sing,  and  developed  rang  and  rung.  To  this  list, 
moreover,  may  be  added  bid  and  eat,  of  Class  V., 
which  have  double  forms  in  use,  though  but  one  is 
derived  from  the  original  preterite.  In  the  case  of 
eat,  the  vowel-sound  of  the  preterite  is  sometimes  long, 
as  in  ate,  sometimes  short,  as  in  cat;  in  the  latter,  the 
barbarous  spelling,  as  not  unusual,  gives  no  clew  to 
the  pronunciation. 

362.  The  history  of  the  use  of  the  double  forms 
just  given,  as  well  as  of  those  no  longer  found,  makes 
it  clear  that  there  has  been  a  steadily  growing  pref- 
erence, especially  in  late  Modern  English,  for  the 
employment  of  the  forms  derived  from  the  singular. 
Drunk  has  never  been  so  common  as  drank,  and  the 
same  thing  may  be  said,  though  in  a  far  less  degree, 
of  begun  as  compared  with  began.  But  in  the  case  of 
the  two  verbs  of  Class  I.,  ride  and  write,  the  forms 
rid  and  writ,  once  frequently  met  with,  are  now 
almost  entirely  limited  to  the  language  of  poetry,  and 
are  comparatively  rare  in  that.     During  the  last  century 


426  English  Language. 

the  forms  from  the  plural  in  the  list  given  above  were 
in  most  instances  decidedly  more  common  than  those 
derived  from  the  singular.  The  reverse  is  true  of 
the  present  century.  For  illustration,  Pope  (1688- 
1744),  in  his  poetical  works  at  least,  invariably  uses 
rung,  sung,  sunk,  and  sprung,  never  rang,  sang,  sank, 
and  sprang.  Furthermore,  he  has  writ  as  a  preterite 
nine  times,  while  he  so  uses  wrote  but  once.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  usage  of  Tennyson  is  precisely  oppo- 
site. With  him  the  forms  from  the  plural  are  far  less 
common  than  those  from  the  singular,  and  in  the  case 
of  some  verbs  are  never  met  with  at  all.1  The  usage 
of  the  representative  poets  of  the  two  periods  may  be 
taken  as  fairly  representing  the  change  which  has  come 
over  English  usage  in  this  particular  respect. 

363.  To  what  is  this  change  due?  In  spite  of  the 
present  tendency  to  employ  forms  derived  from  the 
singular,  it  is  evident  that  there  was  a  time  when  there 
prevailed  a  preference  for  those  derived  from  the 
plural.  This  is  especially  the  case  with  the  verbs  of 
Class  IIL  (190),  which  have  been  the  ones  mainly 
under  consideration.  In  these,  the  following  forms 
derived  from  the  plural  are  now  exclusively  in 
use  :  — 

1  This  statement  is  based  upon  the  Concordance  to  Tennyson's 
poetry,  which,  however,  comes  down  no  later  than  1869.  Accord- 
ing tn  it,  Tennyson,  up  to  that  time,  had  used  rang  as  a  preterite 
20  times,  rang  \\  times,  sprang  10,  swam  3,  and  began  12,  against 
rung  3,  sung  11,  and  sprung,  swum,  and  begun,  each  once.  He  had 
a  0  used  drank  13  times,  shrank  3  times,  and  s.iuk  20  times, 
againsl  no  instances  of  drunk,  shrunk,  and  sunk.  In  the  case  of 
,  the  translation  oi  Homer  is  excluded. 


The  Strong  Preterite  427 


1.  bind,  bound  (bund-on).  7.  sting,    stung  (stung-on). 

2.  cling,  clung  (clung-on).  S.  swing,  swung  (swung-on). 

3.  light,  fought  (juhlon).  9.  win,       won  (wunn-oii) . 

4.  grind,  ground  (grund- on).  10.  wind,    wound  (wund-on). 

5.  sling,  slung  (slung-oti).  u.  wring,  wrung Qivrung-on) 

6.  spin,  spun  (spunn-on). 

364.  The  general  preference  for  forms  from  the 
plural  of  certain  verbs,  especially  in  the  earlier  period 
of  Modern  English,  was  largely  due  to  the  influence 
of  the  past  participle.  In  the  case  of  verbs  belonging 
to  the  first  and  third  classes,  these  two  parts  of  the 
inflection  were  almost  the  same  in  Anglo-Saxon.  In 
Early  English  they  came  to  be  exactly  the  same. 
Let  us  take  the  verb  turitan,  of  Class  I.,  and  singan, 
of  Class  III.,  as  exemplifying  the  processes  which 
brought  about  identity  of  form.  The  preterite  plural 
of  the  first  is  writon,  the  past  participle  is  writen;  of 
the  second,  the  corresponding  parts  are  sungon  and 
sungen.  Consequently  the  only  difference  in  each 
case  between  the  two  forms  is  in  the  vowel  of  the 
unaccented  final  syllable.  When  0  of  the  preterite 
plural  was  weakened  to  <?,  even  this  slight  distinction 
disappeared.  Writen  and  sungen  served  equally  for 
the  two  parts  under  consideration.  As  the  -n  and 
the  -e  successively  fell  away,  it  followed  that  the  regu- 
lar form  for  the  past  participle,  and  one  of  the  two 
forms  of  the  preterite,  would  come  to  be  writ  and 
sung.     Such  they  actually  were. 

365.    At  this  point   the   influence   of  verbs   of  the 


428  English  Language. 

weak  conjugation  came  into  play.  In  that  conjuga- 
tion the  preterite  and  the  past  participle  had  now 
assumed  precisely  the  same  form.  Accordingly,  the 
influence  of  this  inflection  was  insensibly  brought  to 
bear  upon  these  strong  verbs,  so  as  to  make  them 
conform  in  this  respect  to  the  practice  of  the  vast 
majority  of  verbs  in  the  language.  It  was  natural, 
therefore,  that  the  plural  should,  as  a  rule,  be  chosen, 
when  the  selection  was  limited  to  one  form.  This  was 
the  cause  that  has  led  to  its  exclusive  or  equal  adop- 
tion in  twenty-eight  verbs  of  Class  III.,  which  still  exist 
in  our  tongue.  The  only  exception,  indeed,  is  in  the 
case  of  run;  and  this  was  doubtless  due  to  the  fact 
that  the  vowel  //  had  made  its  way  into  the  present, 
where  it  had  no  right  ;  and  so,  instead  of  rin,  that 
form  became  run;  ami,  to  distinguish  the  preterite 
from  the  present,  the  vowel  of  the  singular  was 
chosen.  Yet  even  here  in  popular  speech  run  is 
sometimes  found  as  the  preterite;  and  from  the  pop- 
ular speech  it  has  occasionally  made  its  way  into 
literature  (200).  It  is  expressly  mentioned  by  Den 
Jonson  as  being  in  use  in  his  time. 

366.  The  influence  of  the  past  participle  in  deter- 
mining  the  choice  of  the  plural  as  the  form  for  the 
modern  preterite  was  neither  so  thoroughgoing  nor  so 
permanent  in  the  verbs  of  Class  1.(167).  This  was 
due  to  the  fact  that  in  those  of  them  which  have  been 
transmitted  to  Modern  English,  the  original  participle 
has  either  been  dropped  entirely  or  the  full  form  of 
it  with  the  ending  -en  retained.     In  the  one  case  it 


The  Strong  Preterite.  429 

has  come  to  have  the  same  form  as  the  preterite,  as 
in  abode  and  shone;  in  the  other  the  retention  of 
its  full  form  makes  the  past  participle  so  distinct  from 
the  preterite  that  the  two  parts  could  never  be  con- 
founded or  assimilated. 

367.  This  preference  for  forms  from  the  plural  of 
the  preterite  belongs,  it  has  been  said,  to  the  earlier 
period  of  Modern  English.  But  in  the  latter  half  of 
this  period,  especially  within  the  past  hundred  years, 
the  language  has  largely  given  up  the  disposition  to 
assimilate  the  preterites  and  past  participles  of  verbs 
of  the  strong  conjugation.  On  the  contrary,  it  evinces 
a  decided  disposition  to  distinguish  them  whenever 
practicable.  One  evidence  of  this  has  already  been 
furnished  in  contrasting  the  practice  of  Pope  and  of 
Tennyson  in  the  use  of  the  preterites  of  ring,  sing, 
sink,  and  spring  (362).  It  is  by  no  means  impossible 
that  other  forms  from  the  preterite  singular,  such  as 
span,  swang,  and  wan,  may,  in  process  of  time,  be 
introduced  into  the  literary  speech.  We  see  this  ten- 
dency much  more  plainly  manifested,  however,  in  the 
increasing  disposition  to  discard  even  from  colloquial 
usage  certain  shortened  forms  of  the  past  participle, 
where  they  are  identical  with  the  forms  of  the  preterite. 

368.  This  is  especially  noticeable  in  verbs  of  the 
second,  fourth,  and  fifth  classes.  For  instance,  the 
shortened  past  participles  chose,  froze,  broke,  stole, 
spoke,  ami  trod  can  be  found  to  a  greater  or  less 
extent  in  the  literature  that  represents  the  language 
of  society.      But   they    are   found    now    far    less    fre- 


43°  English  Language. 

quently  than  formerly,  and  show  signs  of  disappear- 
ing altogether.  The  tendency  to  distinguish  between 
the  two  parts  of  the  verb  is  made  very  prominent  in 
the  case  of  those  of  the  second,  fourth,  and  fifth 
classes,  —  to  which  the  examples  above  cited  belong, 
—  because  in  them  in  most  instances  the  vowel  of  the 
past  participle  had  introduced  itself  into  the  preterite, 
largely  in  consequence  of  the  desire  once  prevailing 
to  assimilate  the  two  forms. 

369.  In  the  discussion  of  the  verbs  of  the  fourth 
and  fifth  classes,  it  was  remarked  that  in  the  former,*?, 
the  vowel  of  the  past  participle,  made  its  way  into  the 
preterite,  and  displaced  the  a  previously  belonging  to 
the  stem  (206)  ;  and  that  from  this  same  class  this 
same  vowel  further  made  its  way  into  both  the  pret- 
erite and  past  participle  of  some  verbs  of  the  fifth 
class  (214).  There  are  in  these,  consequently,  two 
forms  of  the  preterite  to  be  found,  —  one  derived 
from  the  vowel  of  the  original  preterite,  and  the  other 
from  the  vowel  of  the  passive  participle.  The  first  of 
these  are,  of  course,  the  older ;  but  in  most  cases  they 
have  now  gone  out  of  use.  The  verbs  of  this  class 
which  have  exhibited,  or  do  exhibit,  these  double 
forms  of  the  preterite  are  the  following  :  — 


CLASS    IV. 

Infinitive. 

Old  Preterite. 

New  Preterite. 

bear, 

bare, 

bore. 

break, 

brake, 

broke. 

shear, 

share, 

shore. 

The  Strong  Preterite. 


431 


Infinitive. 

Old  Preterite. 

New  Preterite 

steal, 

stale, 

stole. 

tear, 

tare, 
CLASS  V. 

tore. 

get, 

gat, 

got. 

speak, 

spake, 

spoke. 

tread, 

trad, 

trod. 

weave, 

wave, 

wove. 

The  weak  verb  wear,  which,  on  becoming  strong, 
entered  the  fourth  class,  developed  likewise  two  pret- 
erites, ware  and  wore  (210).  To  this  list  may  be 
added  drive,  of  Class  I.,  with  its  two  preterites 
drove  and  drave.  The  latter  form,  which  goes  back 
to  the  Old  English  period,  lasted  down  to  the  six- 
teenth century,  and  is  still  found  occasionally  in 
poetry.  For  sware,  a  collateral  form  of  swore,  see 
section  228. 

370.  Besides  the  two  original  tenses  —  the  present 
and  the  preterite  —  English  has  had  from  the  begin- 
ning, or  has  developed,  certain  verb-phrases  which 
correspond  in  power  and  use  to  the  tenses  found  in 
other  languages  of  the  Indo-European  family.  The 
primitive  Indo-European  had  itself  five  tenses ;  and 
of  these,  the  imperfect,  the  future,  and  the  aorist 
were  not  found  in  any  of  the  earliest  Teutonic  tongues. 
Their  places,  however,  have  all  been  supplied  by  com- 
pound forms,  which  it  will  be  best  to  consider  under 
the  titles  usually  given  them  in  English  grammars. 


432  English  Language. 


THE    FUTURE    TENSE. 

371.  As  the  Anglo-Saxon  had  no  future  tense,  the 
present  was  usually  employed  to  express  the  relation 
denoted  by  it.  This  was  a  peculiarity  shared  by  our 
speech  with  all  the  Teutonic  tongues ;  and  in  all  of 
them  it  continues  to  exist  to  the  present  day.  Phrases 
like  '  To-morrow  is  Sunday,'  '  I  am  going  to  the  city 
next  week,'  and  numerous  others,  are  common  in 
every  period  of  our  speech,  and  in  every  great  writer  of 
our  literature.  But  Modern  English  does  not  use  the 
present  for  the  future,  by  any  means,  as  frequently  as 
do  several  of  the  other  Teutonic  languages,  in  particu- 
lar the  modern  High  German. 

372.  But,  even  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  period,  the 
necessity  for  more  precise  and  definite  expression  was 
beginning  to  be  felt.  The  verbs  sceal,  '  I  am  obliged,' 
'  I  ought,'  and  wille,  '  I  wish/  '  I  have  a  mind  to,'  are, 
even  at  that  early  time,  occasionally  found  joined  to 
the  infinitive  of  another  verb  to  express  its  future ; 
though,  generally,  and  perhaps  it  is  right  to  say  in- 
variably, there  was,  in  the  employment  of  these,  more 
or  less  reference  to  the  original  idea  of  obligation 
involved  in  the  one,  and  of  inclination  or  intention  in 
the  other.  Still,  in  the  Northumbrian  dialect,  the  idea 
of  simple  futurity  may  be  said  at  times  to  be  distinctly 
conveyed  by  these  auxiliaries.  In  the  Early  English 
period  this  became  a  common  usage,  the  employment 
of  which  steadily  increased  from  that  time,  and  is  now 
universal. 


The  Future-Perfect   Tense.  433 

373.  In  the  sixteenth  century  a  delicate  distinc- 
tion in  the  use  of  the  auxiliaries  shall  and  will  began 
to  be  prevalent.  It  is  not  rigidly  ob^.'ved  in  our 
version  of  the  Bible,  and  variations  from  the  present 
use  are  found  in  writers  of  the  Elizabethan  period, 
such  as  Bacon  and  Shakspeare,  though  more  fre- 
quently with  the  preterites  would  and  should  than 
with  the  present  tenses  of  these  verbs.  In  the  seven- 
teenth century  the  distinction  between  the  two  verbs 
became  firmly  established  ;  though  this  statement  is 
strictly  true  only  of  England,  and  not  of  the  English 
spoken  in  Scotland  or  Ireland.  Immigration  has,  to 
a  great  extent,  broken  down  the  distinction  in  the 
United  States,  especially  in  certain  portions  :  the  Irish 
do  not  know  it,  and  the  Germans  do  not  acquire  it. 

FUTURE-PERFECT   TENSE. 

374.  The  future-perfect  was  the  last  of  the  verb- 
phrases  denoting  the  relation  of  time  to  be  formed. 
As  its  name  denotes,  it  is  a  compound  of  the  future 
and  of  the  perfect.  It  was,  consequently,  unknown  to 
the  Anglo-Saxon ;  but  it  likewise  rarely  appeared  in 
Early  English,  and  it  is  certainly  not  common  before 
Modern  English.1  Its  use,  indeed,  is  easily  avoided, 
as  its  place  can  be,  and  often  still  is,  taken  by  the 

1  The  earliest  instance  of  its  employment  I  have  chanced  to  notice 
is  in  the  following  extract  from  Caxton's  Recuyell  of  the  History 
of  Troye,  written  between  1570  and  1575:  "And  I  shall  sende  hit 
to  Vlixes,  and  he  shall  here  the  blame  vpon  hym,  and  euery  man 
shall  saye  that  Vlixes  shall  have  stolen  hyt,  and  we  shall  be  quyte 
therof  bothe  two." 


434  English  Language. 

compound-perfect,  and  even  sometimes  by  the  pres- 
ent. It  was  the  former  of  these  that  was  usually 
employed  during  the  Middle  English  period.  In  fact, 
the  same  sentence,  involving  the  conception  expressed 
by  this  tense,  has  been  and  can  be  represented  in  a 
variety  of  ways,  as  may  be  seen  in  the  following  illus- 
trations :  — 

1.  Before  the  cock  crow  twice,  thou  deniest  me  thrice. 

2.  Before  the  cock  crow  twice,  thou  shalt  deny  me  thrice. 

3.  Before  the  cock  has  crowed  twice,  thou  shalt  deny  me 
thrice. 

4.  Before  the  cock  shall  crow  twice,  thou  shalt  deny  me 
thrice. 

5.  Before  the  cock  has  crowed  twice,  thou  shalt  have  denied 
me  thrice. 

6.  Before  the  cock  shall  have  crowed  twice,  thou  shalt  have 
denied  me  thrice. 

The  first  of  these  expressions  is  the  one  employed 
in  Anglo-Saxon  ;  the  last  is  found  only  in  Modern 
English,  which,  however,  employs  all  the  rest.  The 
second  and  third  belong  to  the  Old  English  period; 
the  fourth  and  fifth  to  the  Middle  English. 

THE  PERFECT  AND  PLUPERFECT. 

375.  The  perfect  and  pluperfect  are  compound 
tenses,  formed  of  the  past  participle,  with  the  present 
and  preterite  respectively  of  either  the  verb  be  or  have. 
The  use  of  these  forms  goes  back  to  the  earliest  period 
of  English  ;    but   the   simple   preterite    was   then  also 


The  Perfect  Tense.  435 

frequently  employed  to  represent  the  idea  expressed 
by  both.  Originally,  the  auxiliary  have  seems  to  have 
been  joined  only  with  transitive  verbs,  and  be  with 
intransitive  ;  but  the  employment  of  the  former  has 
as  steadily  increased  as  that  of  the  latter  has  dimin- 
ished during  the  whole  history  of  our  speech.  Even 
in  Anglo-Saxon,  though  be  was  the  strictly  correct 
auxiliary  with  verbs  of  motion,  have  can  be  found 
joined  with  them  also,  as,  siddan  Hie  togcedere  gegan 
hcefdon  (Beowulf,  line  2631)  ;  and  this  has  now  be- 
come far  the  more  common  usage.  The  verb  be  was, 
from  the  beginning,  added  as  an  auxiliary  to  certain 
intransitive  verbs  denoting  motion,  rest,  or  change, 
as  is  gone,  is  set,  is  grown,  and  others ;  and  this 
has  maintained  itself  down  to  the  present  time.  But 
so  steady  has  been  the  encroachment  of  have,  that 
this  auxiliary  may  now  be  regarded  as  the  regular 
one  to  form  the  perfect  and  pluperfect  in  Modern 
English. 

376.  Besides  these  forms,  there  are  two  other 
methods  of  inflection  that  need  to  be  considered,  — 
the  one  commonly  called  the  progressive  form,  and 
the  other  the  emphatic. 

377.  The  former  of  these  is  compounded  of  the 
tenses  of  the  verb  be  and  of  the  present  participle  of 
another  verb,  as  /  am  speaking,  I  was  speaking.  The 
forms  used  to  denote  the  present  and  the  preterite  go 
back  to  the  very  earliest  period  of  the  language,  and 
throughout  the  whole  history  of  our  speech  there  has 
been  but  little  variation  in  the  extent  or  character  of 


436  English  Language. 

their  usage.  They  need,  therefore,  no  remark,  save 
that,  as  compound  tenses  have  been  added  to  the  sub- 
stantive verb,  a  full  set  of  corresponding  forms  with 
the  present  participle  have  been  successively  added, 
as  /  shall  or  will  be  speaking,  I  have  been  speaking,  I 
had  been  speaking.  These  have  come  to  be  widely 
employed.  Even  the  form  for  the  future-perfect,  / 
shall  or  will  have  been  speaking,  is  fully  recognized  in 
grammars,  though  it  is  comparatively  limited  in  usage. 

378.  The  history  of  the  so-called  emphatic  forms 
is  far  more  varied.  They  are  compounded  of  the 
present  and  preterite  of  the  verb  do  with  the  infinitive 
of  another  verb.  These  forms  cannot  be  said  to  have 
come  into  general  use  until  the  early  part  of  the  fif- 
teenth century.  In  place  of  do,  the  employment  of 
which  then  became  frequent,  gin  had  been  the  verb 
previously  combined  with  the  infinitive.  This  is 
strictly  true  of  its  preterite  gan,  rather  than  of  the 
present;  for  while  the  latter  is  very  infrequent,  the 
former  is  very  common.  The  verb  gin  is  rarely  found 
in  Anglo-Saxon,  outside  of  its  compounds,  especially 
on-ginnan.  A  similar  statement  can  be  made  as  to 
Modern  English,  in  which  it  is  scarcely  met  with  save 
in  the  compound  de-gin. 

379.  As  an  auxiliary,  however,  gin  occurs  con- 
stantly in  Early  English.  Its  employment  in  that 
capacity  was  foreshadowed  by  the  compound,  into 
which  it  entered.  The  use  of  the  preterite  of  on- 
ginnan,  with  an  infinitive  to  express  the  relation 
denoted  by  the  preterite,  can  be  traced  back  to  the 


'Do '  as  a  Principal   Verb.  437 

Anglo-Saxon  ;  '  but,  in  the  thirteenth  and  fourteenth 
centuries,  the  infinitive  with  the  preterite  of  the  simple 
verb  gin  became  the  form  in  general  use.  Gan  was 
strictly  used  as  the  singular,  and  gunne{n)  or gonne{ii) 
as  the  plural,  as  has  been  previously  pointed  out  in 
section  358. 

380.  Do  itself,  at  this  period,  when  employed  with 
the  infinitive,  ordinarily  meant  '  to  cause  '  ;  in  which 
usage  make  has  taken  its  place  in  Modern  English. 
The  signification  conveyed  by  it  can  be  exemplified 
by  the  following  passage  from  Chaucer  :  — 

I  wot  vvel  she  wol  do  me  slee  som  day 
Som  neighebor. 

Prologue  to  Monk's  Tale,  line  29. 


'&■ 


It  is  from  this  causative  sense  that  many  suppose  that 
do  and  did  came  at  last  to  be  looked  upon  as  having, 
with  the  infinitive,  the  force  of  a  present  and  a  pret- 
erite. '  He  did  arrest  the  man  '  would,  in  the  four- 
teenth century,  strictly  have  meant,  '  he  caused  the 
man  to  be  arrested ' ;  and  the  transition  from  the 
earlier  usage  to  the  modern  does  not  seem  difficult. 
But  it  is  far  more  reasonable  to  attribute  the  rise  of 
the  idiom  to  another  method  of  expression  which  has 
been  common  in  English  during  all  the  periods  of  its 
history.  This  is  the  wide  employment  of  the  present 
and  preterite  of  do  to  supply,  in  a  following  clause,  the 
place  of  the  principal  verb  of  the  preceding  one.     In 

1  For  illustration,  see  the  Anglo-Saxon  poem  of  Elene,  lines  303, 
306,  311. 


43 8  English  Language. 

such  a  sentence,  for  instance,  as  '  He  thinks  upon 
this  subject  as  I  do,'  the  transition  by  which  the  prin- 
cipal verb  would  be  supplied  in  many  cases  after  do  is 
a  natural  and  an  easy  one.  As  already  stated,  this 
usage  of  do  has  been  common  during  all  periods  of 
English,  and  is  as  frequently  met  with  in  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  as  in  any  other. 

381.  But,  whatever  may  be  the  fact  as  to  its  origin, 
this  so-called  emphatic  form  did  not  come  into  gen- 
eral use  till  the  fifteenth  century.  Scattered  instances 
of  its  employment  can  be  found  much  earlier,  extend- 
ing up  even  into  Anglo-Saxon.  In  the  thirteenth  cen- 
tury it  is  occasionally  found  :  but  neither  during  that 
nor  the  following  century  can  it  be  said  to  be  at  all 
common.  Even  then  the  form  for  the  preterite  made 
by  compounding  gan  with  the  infinitive  was  in  alto- 
gether wider  employment.  The  great  writers  who 
nourished  at  the  beginning  of  the  Middle  English 
period  —  Chaucer,  Langland,  and  Gower  —  rarely 
made  use  of  the  forms  of  do  to  express  this  relation. 
But  with  their  immediate  successors  at  the  beginning 
of  the  fifteenth  century,  the  verb  so  employed  seems 
to  have  become  a  favorite.  The  joining  to  the  infini- 
tive of  do  and  did,  especially  the  latter,  is  fairly  com- 
mon in  Lydgate's  writings.  It  occurs  a  few  times  in 
the  "Kinges  Quair"  of  James  I.  of  Scotland.1  But 
by  the  end  of  the  fifteenth  century  such  a  usage  had 
become  e\i  eedingly  frequent.2 

382.  Still  it  was  in  the  Elizabethan  era  that  the  use 

1  See  page  136.  2  See  page  156. 


'Do '  as  an  Auxiliary    Verb.  439 

of  do  and  did  with  the  infinitive  was  most  widespread, 
at  least  in  declarative  sentences.  In  respect  to  these, 
a  great  change  began  to  take  place  during  the  seven- 
teenth century.  So  marked  did  the  aversion  become 
to  the  employment  of  this  auxiliary  in  sentences  of  this 
kind,  that  it  was  felt  to  be  out  of  place,  unless  used  for 
the  specific  purpose  of  making  the  expression  emphatic. 
Pope's  satirical  line,  published  in  1711, — 

While  expletives  their  feeble  aid  do  join,  — 

would  have  had  no  special  point  had  it  been  com- 
posed a  century  earlier.  This  feeling  apparently  con- 
tinued to  increase  during  the  eighteenth  century,  and 
seems  to  have  been  then  much  more  potent  than  now. 
Dr.  Johnson  speaks  of  the  words  do  and  did  as  degrad- 
ing in  the  current  estimate  the  line  that  admits  them  ; 
and  in  his  Life  of  Cowley,  he  quotes  from  that  poet 
the  following  passage,  "  in  which,"  he  observes,  "  every 
reader  will  lament  to  see  just  and  noble  thoughts  de- 
frauded of  their  praise  by  inelegance  of  language  "  :  — 

Where  honor  or  where  conscience  does  not  bind, 

No  other  law  shall  shackle  me. 

Slave  to  myself  I  ne'er  will  be; 
Nor  shall  my  future  actions  be  confined 

By  my  own  present  mind. 
Who  by  resolves  and  vows  engaged  does  stand 

For  days,  that  yet  belong  to  fate, 
Does  like  an  unthrift  mortgage  his  estate, 

Before  it  falls  into  his  hand, 

The  bondman  of  the  cloister  so, 
All  that  he  does  receives  does  always  owe. 


44-0  English  Language. 

And  still  as  Time  comes  in,  it  goes  away, 

Not  to  enjoy  but  debts  to  pay. 
Unhappy  slave,  and  pupil  to  a  bell ! 
Which  his  hour's  work  as  well  as  hours  does  tell; 
Unhappy  till  the  last,  the  kind  releasing  knell. 

383.  Yet,  while  the  language  still  continues  ordi- 
narily to  restrict  the  use  of  do,  and  to  a  less  extent 
that  of  did,  in  declarative  sentences,  it  has  gone  to 
the  other  extreme  in  the  case  of  interrogative  and 
negative  sentences.  With  them  the  employment  of 
these  auxiliaries  has  become  almost  universal.  Men 
no  longer  ask  under  ordinary  circumstances,  Go  you  ? 
but,  in  its  place,  Do  you  go  ?  Again,  they  do  not 
usually  say,  You  go  not,  but  You  do  not  go. 

THE   IMPERATIVE. 

384.  The  imperative  is  found  in  Anglo-Saxon  only 
in  the  second  person ;  but  it  has  distinct  endings  for 
the  singular  and  the  plural.  The  form  for  the  latter  is 
precisely  the  same  as  the  plural  of  the  present  indica- 
tive, as  will  be  seen  in  the  following  examples  of  the 
imperative  in  the  verbs  already  given  :  — 

Sing,   sing,  dim,  ere,  Idea, 

PI.       singa'S.  demaM.  eriafi.  Iociaft. 

The  distinction  between  the  two  numbers  was  gen- 
erally kept  up  until  the  fourteenth  century.  But  long 
before  that  the  plural  termination  -atli  had  been 
weakened  into  -ft//,  and  of  this  latter  the  -th  was  not 
unfrequently  dropped.     Prom  the  fourteenth  century 


The  Imperative  Mode.  441 

on,  the  forms  for  the  two  numbers  began  to  be  used 
interchangeably.  This,  no  doubt,  was  largely  due  to 
the  increasing  employment  of  the  plural  pronoun  of 
the  second  person  for  addressing  single  individuals 
(131).  As  difference  of  form  for  the  two  numbers 
lost,  in  consequence,  its  usefulness,  the  ending  of  the 
plural  went  out  of  use  in  the  fifteenth  century.1 

385.  For  the  first  and  third  persons  of  the  impera- 
tive, the  subjunctive,  followed  generally  by  the  per- 
sonal pronouns,  was  widely  employed  in  Anglo-Saxon. 
This  usage  has  lasted  down  to  modern  times,  and  is 
found  to  this  day,  at  least  in  poetry.  Return  we  to 
our  subject,  meaning  '  Let  us  return  to  our  subject,'  is 
a  method  of  expression  which  lias  been  employed 
from  the  earliest  period  of  our  speech.  The  place  of 
the  first  person  plural  of  the  imperative  was  also  sup- 
plied in  Anglo-Saxon  by  an  infinitive  preceded  by 
Man,  which  corresponds  to  the  modern  'let  us.' 
This  went  wholly  out  of  use  within  the  second  century 
after  the  Norman  Conquest.  After  that  time  the 
place  of  both  the  methods  of  expression  just  men- 
tioned came  to  be  wholly  or  mainly  supplied  by  the 
verb  let,  with  a  personal  pronoun.  Still,  though  this 
made  its  appearance  in  the  thirteenth  century,  it  can 
hardly  be  called  very  common  even  in  the  fourteenth. 
It  has  now  become,  with  an  infinitive  complement,  the 
ordinary  method  of  representing  the  imperative  of  the 
first  and  third  persons. 

1  See  page  156. 


442  English  Language. 


THE    INFINITIVE. 

386.  The  infinitive  was  formed  in  the  primitive 
Indo-European  by  adding  to  the  verbal  stem  the  suffix 
-ana.  This  in  all  the  early  Teutonic  languages  had 
dropped  the  final  -a,  and,  becoming  -an,  had  been 
appended  directly  to  the  verb  without  any  connective. 
Or  perhaps  it  may  more  properly  be  said  that  it  had 
dropped  the  initial  a  also,  and  that  n  alone  was  the 
sign  of  the  infinitive  ;  thus  '  to  bind  '  is,  in  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  period,  represented  simply  by  the  form  bind-a-n, 
made  up  of  the  root  bind,  the  connective  a,  and  n  the 
infinitive  sign.  In  the  Old  Frisian  and  the  Old  Norse 
this  final  -//  had  also  disappeared,  and  the  infinitive 
regularly  terminated  in  -a.  While  the  West- Saxon 
dialect  clung  firmly  to  -an,  the  Northumbrian  ex- 
hibited the  characteristic  of  the  Frisian  and  the  Norse 
in  giving  up  -n ;  thus  the  infinitive .  come  is  in  West- 
Saxon  cuman  ;  in  Northumbrian  it  is  anna. 

387.  The  weakening  of  the  -an  to  -en  speedily 
became  universal  not  long  after  the  Conquest.  As  to 
the  retention  or  abandonment  of  the  letter  -//  itself, 
usage  was,  however,  exceedingly  variable.  In  fact,  it 
remained  for  several  centuries;  and  the  Romance 
verbs  that  were  brought  into  the  language  assumed  it 
as  naturally  as  they  did  the  inflections  of  the  tenses. 
It  is  not  to  be  understood  that  it  was  anywhere  in 
exclusive  use.  Infinitives  without  -//  were  for  a  long 
while  just  as  common  as  the  fuller  form,  if  not  more 
so.     In  the  fourteenth  century  the  disposition  to  drop 


The  Infinitive  Mode.  443 

this  letter  became  very  pronounced  ;  in  the  fifteenth,  it 
had  become  general ;  in  the  sixteenth,  the  -11  was  used 
only  for  poetic  effect,  or  as  a  designed  imitation  of 
the  archaic  style.  It  is  therefore  not  infrequent  in 
Spenser  and  his  followers.  In  fact  it  is  apt  to  occur 
wherever  there  is  an  intention  to  reproduce  ancient 
forms  of  expression,  as  in  the  following  citation  from 
one  of  the  prologues  ascribed  to  Gower  in  the  Shak- 
spearian  play  of  Pericles  :  — 

Though  he  strive 
To  kitten  bad. 

388.  In  truth  the  whole  history  of  this  ending  is 
essentially  the  same  as  that  of  the  plural  of  the  present 
tense,  which  has  already  been  recounted  (339-341). 
Like  that,  after  the  -n  disappeared,  the  final  -e  which 
was  left  ceased  to  be  sounded.  Like  that,  it  was  in 
some  instances  dropped  in  the  spelling,  in  others 
retained.  The  latter  was  something  fairly  certain  to 
take  place  when  the  connective  of  the  original  Anglo- 
Saxon  verb  was  ia  rather  than  a  ;  as,  for  instance,  our 
word  hate  comes  from  hat-ia-n,  whereas  from  bind-a-n 
we  have  bind,  and  not  binde.  But  the  retention  of 
the  final  -e  is  very  arbitrary. 

389.  The  infinitive  is  in  its  nature  a  verbal  noun, 
and  in  Anglo-Saxon  it  had  a  dative  case,  ending  in 
-anne,  invariably  preceded  by  the  preposition  to;  as, 
to  bindanne.  This  is  frequently  called  the  gerundial 
infinitive.  The  termination  in  -anne  speedily  passed, 
after  the  Conquest,  into  -enne   or  -ene.     At  last,  drop- 


444  English  Language. 

ping  the  final  -e  entirely,  its  form  became  the  same  as 
that  of  the  pure  infinitive,  originally  terminating  in  -an. 
Both,  therefore,  came  to  have  the  same  ending  -en,  and 
naturally  to  share  in  the  changes  which  it  underwent. 
One  effect  of  this  unification  of  form  was,  that  after 
the  Conquest,  the  infinitive  early  began  to  assume 
the  preposition  to  before  it.  This  tendency  steadily 
increased,  so  that  at  the  present  day  the  infinitive 
without  this  preposition  is  rarely  found,  unless  pre- 
ceded by  such  verbs  or  verbal  phrases  as  dare,  need, 
bid,  make,  let,  had  better,  bad  sooner,  bad  rather, 
bad  as  lief,  and  others,  or  by  verbs  denoting  physi- 
cal or  intellectual  perception,  like  see,  watch,  and  feel. 
At  times  the  infinitive,  when  joined  with  these  verbs, 
takes  also  the  preposition  before  it.  This  was  once 
more  common  than  now,  at  least  in  the  case  of  phrases 
like  had  rather,  which  in  the  literary  language  suc- 
ceeded had  liefer.  This  usage  may  be  illustrated  by 
the  following  example  :  — 

Levere  ich  hadde  to  dyen  on  a  knvf 
Than  thee  offende,  trewe,  deere  wyf. 

CHAUCER,  Merchant's  Tale,  line  919. 

390.  This  use  of  to  with  the  pure  infinitive  (as  to 
secan,  Phcenix,  line  275)  is  exceedingly  rare  in  Anglo- 
Saxon  ;  but,  as  we  have  just  seen,  it  has  now  become 
so  general  that,  with  the  disappearance  of  the  special 
gerundial  form,  the  preposition  itself  has  almost  come 
to  be  regarded  as  belonging  to  the  infinitive.  Hence 
there  has  been  evinced,  on  the  part  of  many,  a  marked 


The  Infinitive  Mode.  445 

hostility  to  the  tendency,  which  has  displayed  itself 
widely  in  Modern  English,  to  insert  an  adverb  between 
the  preposition  and  the  infinitive  for  the  sake  of 
greater  emphasis  or  clearness.  This  practice,  examples 
of  which  go  as  far  back,  certainly,  as  the  fifteenth  cen- 
tury,1 has  now  become  very  common.  In  spite  of  the 
opposition  it  encounters,  there  is  little  question  that  it 
will  establish  itself  permanently  in  the  language. 

391.  The  gerundial  infinitive,  however,  occasionally 
preserved  a  distinct  form  down  to  the  end  of  the 
fourteenth  century.  It  was  then  frequently  confused 
with  the  present  participle  in  -aide ;  but  before  the 
beginning  of  the  Modern  English  period  it  had  dis- 
appeared from  the  language.  Still  though  the  form 
had  disappeared,  the  sense  survived.  Relics  of  its 
original  use  continue  to  be  common  to  this  day  in 
phrases  such  as  '  the  house  to  let,'  '  not  fit  to  eat,'  and 
numerous  others. 

392.  The  infinitive  of  the  past,  represented,  for 
example,  by  to  have  told,  is  not  known  to  the  Anglo- 
Saxon.  It  originated  in  the  Old  English  period,  ap- 
parently toward  its  conclusion,  and  was  frequently 
employed  during  the  Middle  English  and  first  part  of 
the  Modern  English  period.  When  the  verb  of  the 
predicate  is  in  the  past  tense,  there  has  been  constantly 
exhibited  a  disposition  on  the  part  of  the  language  to 
resort   to  this  form    of   the  infinitive.     This   practice 

1  E.g.  Whanne  ever  he  takith  upon  him  for  to  in  nei?bourli  or 
brotherli  manner  correpte  his  Cristen  neijbour  or  brother.  —  PE- 
COCK'S  Repressor,  Prologue  (about  1450). 


446  English  Language. 

goes  back  to  the  fourteenth  century,  as  may  be  illus- 
trated by  the  following  example  :  — 

And  with  the  staf  she  drough  ay  neer  and  neer, 
And  wende  han  hit  this  Aleyn  at  the  fulle. 

Chaucer,  Reeve  s  Tale,  line  3S5. 

Since  that  time  it  has  been  exceedingly  common,  and 
has  in  its  favor  the  sanction  of  usage  by  the  greatest 
English  authors.  Of  late  the  language  seems  disposed 
to  abandon  its  employment ;  at  least  it  is  condemned 
by  many  grammarians. 

THE   PARTICIPLES. 

393.  The  history  of  the  past  participle  has  already 
been  given  in  the  discussion  of  the  two  conjugations. 
In  both  of  these  the  present  participle  was  formed  in 
the  same  way  ;  that  is,  by  the  adding  of  the  suffix 
-ende  to  the  radical  syllable,  as  sing-ende,  '  singing.' 
This  termination  came  to  vary  somewhat  in  the  three 
dialects.  Using  this  same  verb  for  the  sake  of  illus- 
tration, we  find  the  suffix  appearing  in  Old  English 
in  the  three  following  forms  :  — 

Southern.  Midland.  Northern. 

s\x\g-i)ide.  s\r\g-emfe.  sing-tfW(>). 

394.  In  the  Southern  dialect,  as  early  as  the  twelfth 
century  the  participle  was  often  confounded  with  the 
gerundial  infinitive  in  -ennc.  More  important,  how- 
ever, as  regards  the  future  of  the  form,  was  the  fact 
that  in  the  same  dialect  it  began  at  the  same  early 


The  Participles.  447 

period  to  assume  at  times  the  termination  of  the 
verbal  substantive.  This  in  Anglo-Saxon  ended  usually 
in  -ung,  but  sometimes  in  -ing.  After  the  Norman 
Conquest,  the  latter  became  finally  its  exclusive  form. 
It  became  also  the  form  finally  adopted  by  the  present 
participle.  Necessarily  the  only  distinction  at  first 
between  it  and  the  verbal  noun  was  that  the  former 
had  in  addition  a  final  -e. 

395.  From  the  Southern  dialect,  this  form  in  -inge 
passed  into  the  Midland,  and  after  losing  its  final  -e, 
was  adopted  as  the  standard  form  in  Modern  English. 
The  Northern  participial  ending  -aud(e)  was  due  to 
Scandinavian  influence,  but  never  made  much  head- 
way in  the  Midland.  Still  such  forms  as  glitterand, 
followand,  coinand  were  occasionally  employed  in 
these  dialects,  and  have  sometimes  been  used  in 
Modern  English  by  those  seeking  to  reproduce  the 
language  of  the  past. 

396.  The  simple  present  and  past  participles  belong 
to  the  earliest  period  of  the  language.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  compound  participles  are  all  of  later  growth, 
and  though  useful,  are  none  of  them  absolutely  indis- 
pensable. The  forms  that  have  been  developed  will 
be  illustrated  by  the  use  of  the  transitive  verb  love  and 
the  intransitive  go. 

Being  loved.  Being  gone. 

Having  loved.  Having  gone. 

Having  been  loved.  Having  been  gone. 

Having  been  loving.  Having  been  going. 


448  English  Language. 

397.  These  various  forms  seem  to  have  come  into 
existence  in  the  order  just  given.  The  first  of  them, 
the  composition  of  being  with  the  simple  past  partici- 
ple, probably  made  its  first  appearance  in  the  lan- 
guage in  the  fifteenth  century  ;  but  it  did  not  become 
current  till  the  earlier  part  of  the  sixteenth.  Even 
then  it  is  not  often  met  with,  though  in  this  respect 
there  is  great  difference  in  writers  of  that  time.  It 
was  not  until  the  latter  half  of  that  century  that  the 
compounds  of  having  with  the  past  participle  came 
much  into  use.  Necessarily  the  compounds  with  hav- 
ing been  were  still  later.  Of  these,  the  joining  of  this 
compound  to  the  past  participle  seems  to  have  long 
preceded  its  joining  to  the  present  participle  ;  that  is 
to  say,  such  participial  phrases  as  having  been  gone 
were  earlier,  as  even  now  they  are  much  more  com- 
mon, than  those  represented  by  having  been  going. 
The  former  were  certainly  in  use  in  the  latter  half  of 
the  sixteenth  century.  On  the  other  hand,  the  com- 
position of  being  with  the  present  participle,  though 
perfectly  legitimate  in  theory,  has  scarcely  been  known 
in  practice.  Expressions  like  being  going,  found  in 
Shakspeare's  "  Cymbeline"  (act  iii.  scene  6),  are  very 
rare. 

PASSIVE    FORMATIONS. 

398.  The  primitive  Indo-European  tongue  had  two 
voices,  —  the  active,  and  the  middle  or  reflexive, 
which,  from  the  very  beginning,  seems  to  have  as- 
sumed the  functions  of  the  voice  we  call  the  passive. 


The  Passive    Voice.  449 

The  use  of  the  reflexive  to  do  the  office  of  the  passive 
is  common  enough  in  many  modern  tongues  where 
the  reflexive  pronoun  is  not  united  with  the  verb,  nor 
changed  at  all  in  form  ■  and  how  easy  the  transition  is 
in  sense  can  be  shown  in  our  own  speech  by  many 
familiar  examples.  I  persuade  myself,  for  illustration, 
differs  very  slightly,  and  in  some  cases  not  at  all,  from 
/  am  persuaded.  It  is  from  the  reflexive  that  the 
passive  has  been  developed  in  the  history  of  the  lan- 
guages of  the  Indo-European  family. 

399.  But  in  the  Teutonic  branch  only  one  of  these 
voices  can  be  said  to  exist.  The  Gothic,  indeed,  had 
a  middle,  which,  with  some  few  exceptions,  was  used 
in  a  passive  sense  ;  but  it  was  only  found  in  the  present 
tense,  and  in  that  the  persons  were  much  confounded. 
These  and  other  signs  show,  that,  at  the  time  of  the 
translation  of  the  Bible  by  Ulfilas,  the  form  for  this 
voice  was  going  out  of  use.  In  the  other  Teutonic 
tongues,  occasional  traces  of  a  passive,  which  must 
once  have  existed,  can  be  found  ;  but  they  are  few 
in  number  and  slight  in  importance.  The  only  one 
which  our  earliest  speech  retained  was  hatte,  meaning 
equally  '  I  am  called,'  or,  '  I  was  called.' 

400.  In  all  of  the  early  tongues  of  the  Teutonic 
branch,  the  loss  of  the  form  was  supplied  by  com- 
pounding the  passive  participle  with  the  present  and 
preterite  of  verbs  corresponding  in  meaning  to  our 
verbs  be  and  become.  In  Anglo-Saxon  these  verbs 
were  three  :  beon  and  wesan,  both  meaning  '  to  be,' 
and  weorpan,  meaning  'to  become.'    The  last  verb  has 


45°  English  Language. 

now  gone  out  of  use  in  our  speech  ;  but  it  existed  as 
an  independent  verb  down  to  the  beginning  of  the 
Modern  English  period,1  though  almost  always  in  the 
phrase  woe  worth,  meaning  '  woe  be.'  In  German, 
the  corresponding  form  werden  was  chosen  as  the 
auxiliary  to  form  the  passive  ;  but  in  English  it  was 
never  common  after  the  Anglo-Saxon  period,  and 
indeed  cannot  be  said  to  have  been  common  during 
it.  In  Old  English  the  formation  of  the  passive  with 
the  present  and  preterite  of  wesan  and  beon  became 
early  predominant,  and  worthe(n)  gradually  went  out 
of  use. 

401.  When  the  forms  of  worthe{n),  '  to  become,' 
had  been  given  up,  those  of  the  substantive  verb 
represented  by  am,  was,  and  be  were  the  only  ones 
left  to  express  the  passive.  It  was,  from  the  nature 
of  things,  an  office  for  which  they  were  ill  calculated  ; 
for,  with  a  verb  which  expresses  a  simple  action,  and 
not  a  continuous  state,  the  compounding  of  its  past 
participle  with  the  present  tense  of  the  substantive 
verb  did  not  denote  something  actually  taking  place, 
but  something  which  had  taken  place.  The  field  is 
reaped  corresponds  in  form  to  the  man  is  hated; 
but  it  does  not  correspond  in  the  sense  given  to  the 
verbal  phrase.  With  the  latter  expression  there  is 
existing  action  implied  ;  in  the  former,  only  a  com- 
pleted result.  This  was  a  difficulty  inherent  in  the 
employment  of  this  form.     To  avoid  it,  the  language 

1  What  will  worth,  what  will  In-  the  end  of  this  man  ? 

LATIMER,  Lent  Sermons  (Arber's  reprint,  page  120). 


The  Passive   Voice.  451 

resorted  to  expedients  of  all  kinds  :  it  changed  the 
construction  of  the  sentence,  it  employed  various  cir- 
cumlocutions, and  at  last,  in  the  eighteenth  century, 
it  adopted  verb-phrases  made  up  of  the  present  and 
preterite  of  be  and  the  compound  passive  participle. 
The  more  detailed  history  of  the  passive  formations 
in  such  expressions  as  the  field  is  being  reaped  has 
already  been  given,  and  need  not  be  repeated  here.1 
As  stated  there,  the  use  of  these  forms,  like  that  of 
the  emphatic  forms  with  do  and  did,  is  confined  to 
the  present  and  the  preterite  tense. 

402.  The  discussion  of  the  use  of  the  passive 
belongs  strictly  to  syntax,  and  finds  properly  no  place 
here ;  and  it  is  only  necessary  to  repeat  what  has 
been  previously  said,  that  in  the  freedom  with  which, 
and  in  the  extent  to  which,  the  passive  is  employed, 
English  has  gone  far  beyond  other  cultivated  tongues. 
Such  phrases  as  he  was  given  a  book,  he  was  told  the 
truth,  and  the  like,  run  back  to  the  Middle  English 
period,  and  occur  in  all  the  great  writers  of  our  tongue. 
Expressions  like  the  one  in  the  following  line,  — 

Be  not  denied  access,  stand  at  her  doors, 

Shakspeare,  Twelfth  Night,  act  i.  sc.  4, — 

are  often  ignorantly  condemned  by  those  who  are 
unaware  that  these  exemplify  one  of  the  most  thor- 

1  See   pages  170-173.     The   employment  of  this  formation  was 
foreshadowed  in  the  seventeenth  century.     In  a  tragedy  of  Thomas 
Porter's,  first  published  in  1663,  occur  the  following  lines:  — 
The  fear  of  thceves  is  worse  than  the  loss  we  can 
Sustain  by  them  ;  we're  still  a  being  rob'd. 

The  Villain,  ed.  of  1670,  page  30. 


45 2  English  Language. 

oughly  established   and   characteristic    idioms  of  the 
English  language. 

PRETERITE-PRESENT    VERBS. 

403.  In  all  the  early  Teutonic  tongues,  there  were 
a  number  of  strong  verbs  whose  preterite  tense  had 
assumed  the  signification  of  a  present  ;  and  along 
with  this,  and  perhaps  in  consequence  of  it,  the 
original  present  tense  had  gone  entirely  out  of  use. 
A  familiar  illustration  of  this  assumption  by  a  past 
tense  of  a  present  meaning  can  be  seen  in  the  collo- 
quial use  in  Modern  English  of  /  have  got  in  the  sense 
of  '  I  have,'  '  I  possess.' 

404.  The  process,  however,  had  not  stopped  at  the 
point  indicated  by  this  common  expression.  When 
the  original  present  had  disappeared,  the  original  pret- 
erite, which  had  assumed  entirely  the  signification  of 
a  new  present,  went  on  to  develop  a  new  past  tense. 
This  Litter  was  always  of  the  weak  conjugation.  So, 
in  the  inflection  of  the  new  present  tense,  the  peculi- 
arities of  the  preterite  of  the  strong  conjugation  are 
found  ;  while  in  the  new  preterite  the  inflection  is  the 
one  which  regularly  characterizes  the  weak  verbs. 

405.  In  Anglo-Saxon  there  were  twelve  of  these 
verbs.  Of  these,  seven  continue  to  exist  in  some  form, 
or  have  left  traces  of  themselves  to  some  extent  in 
Modern  English.  As  each  has  had  a  history  of  its 
own,  each  will  necessarily  be  treated  of  by  itself,  so 
far  as  the  changes  which  it  has  undergone  have  not 
ilready  been   discussed  in  the  account   given   in  the 


The  Preterite-Present    Verbs.  453 

previous  pages  of  the  inflection  of  the  verb.  Only  the 
forms  of  the  present  and  the  preterite  indicative  are 
here  laid  down.  The  subjunctive  has  nothing  about 
its  history  different  from  that  of  other  verbs,  and  the 
other  parts  are  developed  in  some  of  these  verbs,  and 
absent  in  others.  It  is,  however,  to  be  added  that 
the  infinitive  forms  here  given  are  in  several  instances 
purely  hypothetical. 

406.  To  Class  I.  of  the  strong  verbs  (167)  belong 
the  first  two  :  — 

(1)  Agctn. 

This  has  given  rise  to  both  a  defective  and  a  regular 
weak  verb  in  Modern  English.  The  defective  verb 
ought  is  in  its  origin  the  new  weak  preterite  of  this 
preterite-present  verb ;  and  its  relations  can  only 
be  comprehended  clearly  by  examining  the  original 
forms. 


Sing. 

Present. 

Preterite. 

I. 

ag,  ah,  I  07vn, 

possess, 

ahte,  ought, 

2. 

aht,  ahst, 

ahtest, 

3- 

ah. 

ahte. 

PI. 

I.  2,  3. 

agon. 

ahton. 

407.  By  comparing  the  Anglo-Saxon  forms  with 
those  of  its  class,  it  will  be  seen  that,  even  in  the 
earliest  period,  this  verb  had  deviated  from  the  regular 
inflection  ;  for  the  vowel  of  the  plural  had  become 
the  same  as  the  singular,  and  we  have  agon  instead  of 


454  English  Language. 

igon.  The  present  forms  continued  to  be  employed 
in  the  Early  English  period,  but  were  gradually  sup- 
planted by  the  preterite.  From  the  infinitive  the 
word  owe  came  into  use,  and,  after  having  for  a  while 
ought  as  its  preterite,  developed  the  regular  form 
owed.  The  general  signification  of '  possess,'  expressed 
by  this  verb,  came  also  to  be  limited  largely  to  the 
possession  of  debts.  In  this  sense  of  pecuniary  obli- 
gation the  preterite  owed  was  in  time  employed  by 
preference.  This  left  the  older  preterite  ought  to 
convey  exclusively  the  idea  of  moral  obligation  or  of 
fitness.  To  this  one  signification,  essentially,  it  is  now 
confined.  It  is  also  limited  to  this  one  tense  ;  though 
the  language  of  the  uneducated  shows  a  constant  ten- 
dency to  treat  ought  as  a  past  participle,  and  the 
verbal  phrase  had  outfit  is  regularly  employed  by 
them.  From  the  original  past  participle  agen,  the 
adjective  own  has  been  derived. 

(2)    Witan. 

408.  The  forms  of  this  verb  have  given  rise  to 
much  misunderstanding.  All  difficulties  connected  with 
it  disappear  at  once  on  an  examination  of  the  original 
inflection  :  — 

Sing.         Present.  Preterite. 

i.       wat,  loot,  wiste,  wist, 

2.  wast,  wistest, 

3.  wat.  wiste. 

PI. 
1,  2,  3.     witon.  wiston. 


The  Preterite-Present   Verbs.  455 

409.  Of  this  verb,  the  infinitive,  to  wit,  still  exists  in 
Modern  English,  especially  in  legal  phraseology,  but 
used  in  the  adverbial  sense  of  'namely.'  Another 
form  of  it,  weet,  is  occasionally  found  in  our  earlier 
poetry.  The  present  and  preterite,  though  little  em- 
ployed, are  still  retained,  mainly  through  their  occur- 
rence in  the  Bible.  The  plural  of  the  present,  wife '(«), 
lasted  down  to  the  fifteenth  century,  but  wot  of  the 
singular  had  largely  taken  its  place  considerably  before 
that  period  ;  and  after  it,  the  latter  form  was  almost 
invariably  used  of  both  numbers. 

410.  In  the  sixteenth  century  wot  farther  developed 
itself  as  a  regular  verb  of  the  weak  conjugation,  hav- 
ing an  infinitive  wot,  and  in  the  present  tense  singular, 
wot,  wottest,  wotteth  or  wots,  the  preterite  wotted, 
and  the  present  participle  wotting.  These  forms  did 
not  permanently  establish  themselves,  nor  were  they 
ever  as  common  as  the  older  and  correcter  forms. 
The  following  are  examples  :  — 

Your  grace  may  sit  secure,  if  none  but  we 
Do  wot  of  your  abode. 

Marlowe,  Edward  II,  act  iv.  sc.  6. 

Thou  wottest  not  what  thou  sayest. 

Peele,  Edward  I.  (ed.  of  1861,  page  382). 

No  man  -wotteth  better  what  he  should  do  and  say. 

More,  Edward  V.  (reprint  of  1812,  page  510). 

The  ploughman  little  wots  to  turn  the  pen. 

Lodge,  Rosalynd. 


45  6  Englisli  Language. 

And  why  he  left  your  court,  the  gods  themselves, 
Wotting  no  more  than  I,  are  ignorant. 

Shakspeake,   Winter  s  Tale,  act.  iii.  sc.  2. 

I  which  wotted  best 
His  wretched  drifts  and  all  his  cursed  case. 

Sackville,  Complaint  of  Buckingham,  line  710. 

411.  The  Early  English  present  participle  witting 
is  found  occasionally  in  the  Modern  English  period, 
and  is  still  preserved  in  the  adverb  unwittingly.  The 
similar  past  participle  wist  was  never  very  common 
outside  of  the  phrase  'Had  I  wist,'  and  is  now  obso- 
lete or  archaic.  The  negative  verbs  not,  from  ne  wot, 
and  niste,  from  ne  wiste,  died  out  in  the  Middle 
English  period.  As  might  be  expected,  as  the  word 
wot  became  obsolescent,  its  character  was  sometimes 
mistaken,  and  it  was  used  with  a  preterite  meaning 
instead  of  a  present,  as  in  the  following  quotation 
from  Bunyan's  "Pilgrim's  Progress  "  :  — 

There  he  stood  still,  and  he  wot  not  what  to  do. 

(Ed.  of  1678,  page  18.) 

412.  Very  curiously,  a  singular  blunder  produced  a 
new  verb  as  the  supposed  present  of  wist.  The  old 
past  participle  of  witan  was  gewiss,  which  became  an 
adjective  in  Anglo-Saxon,  with  the  meaning  of  'cer- 
tain.' It  has  already  been  stated  that  the  Anglo-Saxon 
prefix  gewas  turned,  in  Early  English,  into  y  or  i  (301). 
The  Anglo-Saxon  adjective gewis{s),  'certain,' accord- 
ingly became  in  Early   English    the    adverb  /wis,  or 

is,  'certainly.'     In  the  sixteenth  century  this  was 


The  Preterite-Present    Verbs.  457 

frequently  printed  Iwis,  or  /  wis.  As  a  consequence, 
the  capital  /  was  supposed  to  be  the  personal  pronoun, 
instead  of  the  modern  representative  of  the  prefix  ge  ; 
and  wis  was  accordingly  assumed  to  be  a  verb,  and 
regarded  as  the  present  of  wist.  Wis  has  rarely,  if 
ever,  been  used  outside  of  the  phrase  /  wis,  which  is, 
however,  by  no  means  uncommon  in  poetry,  even  in 
our  own  day.  A  verb  wisse(n),  wis,  —  from  Anglo- 
Saxon  wissian,  'to  show,'  'to  instruct,'  —  died  out  in 
the  Middle  English  period,  and  has  no  connection 
with  the  present  word. 

413.  To  the  third  class  of  verbs  of  the  strong  con- 
jugation (189)  belong  two  preterite-presents.  The 
first  is  :  — 

(3)   Cun nan. 

The  following  is  the  inflection  of  the  verb  in  Anglo- 
Saxon  :  — 


Sing. 

Present 

Preterite. 

I. 

can(n), 

can, 

cu!Se,  could, 

2, 

canst, 

cuSest, 

<5 
J- 

can(n). 

cirSe. 

PI. 

1      2 

cunnon. 

cuSon. 

414.  It  will  be  seen,  that,  even  in  the  Anglo-Saxon, 
the  weak  termination  of  the  second  person,  canst,  had 
taken  the  place  of  the  regular  strong  form,  cunne.  In 
Early  English  coude  is  found  alongside  of  couttie  as  a 
form  for   the  preterite,  and   in  process  of  time  sup- 


45  8  English  Language. 

planted  the  earlier  form.  Into  this  coud(e)  in  the 
sixteenth  century  an  /  was  inserted,  by  a  false  analogy 
with  would  an.1  should ;  but  it  has  never  been  pro- 
nounced. The  verb  never  had  a  present  participle, 
and  its  past  cud —  in  Early  English  couth  or  coud  — 
has  gone  out  of  use  ;  though,  as  an  adjective,  it  sur- 
vives in  the  last  syllable  of  un-couth.  The  infinitive 
has  also  disappeared,  though  it  was  common  in  the 
fourteenth  and  fifteenth  centuries  in  the  form  comic, 
and  in  the  sense  of  'to  be  able.'  In  the  form  can,  it 
still  continued  to  exist  in  the  seventeenth  century, 
though  as  an  archaism,  and  is  sometimes  met  with 
even  in  our  own  day.     Examples  are  :  — 

Ne  no  man  dies  shal  me  conne  espye. 

Chaucer,  Legend  of  Good  Women,  line  2044. 

In  will  the  best  condicion  is  not  to  will,  the  second  not  to  can. 
Bacon,  Essays,  ed.  of  1623.     (Of  Great  Place.) 

415.  Can  as  an  independent  verb  survives,  how- 
ever, in  the  form  con,  '  to  learn,'  and  is  regularly 
inflected  according  to  the  weak  conjugation,  as,  for 
example,  '  He  has  conned  his  lesson.'  Furthermore, 
in  the  Northern  dialect,  there  came  into  frequent  use 
a  form  can,  which  was  in  its  origin  a  mere  variant  of 
gan,  and  used  like  that  with  the  infinitive  to  represent 
the  preterite  (378).  Later,  it  sometimes  came  to  be 
confounded  with  the  present-preterite  can,  and,  in 
consequence,  the  past  tense  couthe  or  coude  of  that 
verb  was  erroneously  used  in  the  sense  of  'did.' 


The  Preterite-Present    Verbs.  459 

416.  (4)   Darrein. 

Sing.         Present.  Preterite. 

1.  dear,  dare,  dorste,  durst, 

2.  dearst,  dorstest, 

3.  dear.  dorste. 

PI. 
1,  2,  3.       durron.  dorston. 

The  presence  in  Anglo-Saxon  of  the  infinitive  of 
this  verb  is  doubtful.  During  that  period  it  will  be 
observed  that  the  original  form  durre  of  the  second 
person  had  been  supplanted  by  dearst. 

417.  As  the  existing  present  is  in  its  origin  a  pret- 
erite, the  third  person  of  the  singular  is  precisely  the 
same  as  the  first ;  but  the  tendency  to  make  it  con- 
form to  the  regular  inflection,  and  form  its  third 
person  in  -s,  has  been  powerful  since  the  beginning 
of  Modern  English.  Both  forms,  he  dare  and  he 
dares,  have  flourished  side  by  side  during  the  last 
three  centuries.  The  verb,  furthermore,  shows  a 
disposition  to  go  over  entirely  to  the  regular  form 
of  the  weak  conjugation.  The  old,  irregular,  weak 
preterite  durst  is  now  far  less  common  than  formerly, 
and  in  the  sense  of  '  to  challenge,  defy,'  is  never  em- 
ployed at  all.  This  form  durst  made  its  way  at  one 
time  into  the  past  participle.  In  all  of  its  meanings, 
indeed,  dare  is  now  frequently  inflected  regularly,  and 
the  new  forms  have  largely  supplanted  the  old.  Dared 
made  its  appearance  as  early,  certainly,  as  the  end  of 
the  sixteenth  century,  and  its  employment  has  steadily 
increased  from  that  time. 


460  English  Language. 

418.    To   the   fourth   class   of  strong   verbs    (205) 


belongs  : 


(5)   Sen  Ian. 


Sing.  Present.  Preterite. 

i.  sceal,  sliall,  sc(e)olde,  should, 

2.  scealt,  sc(e)  oldest, 

3.  sceal.  sc(e)olde. 
PI. 

1,  2,  3.  sculon.  sc(e)oldon. 

419.  In  Anglo-Saxon,  ic  sceal  meant  ordinarily  'I 
am  under  obligation,'  '  I  ought,'  ' I  must.'  Its  transi- 
tion to  express  the  future  has  already  been  pointed 
out  in  the  account  of  that  tense  (372).  It  has  re- 
mained throughout  its  history  faithful,  comparatively 
speaking,  to  the  Anglo-Saxon  form  ;  and  the  distinc- 
tion between  the  vowel  of  the  singular  and  of  the 
plural  was  kept  up,  at  least  by  some  writers,  as  late 
as  the  fifteenth  century.  In  fact,  this  verb  preserved 
this  distinction  after  most  of  the  other  strong  pret- 
erites had  abandoned  it;  shal  and  sliul{cn)  being, 
in  the  fourteenth  century,  the  respective  methods 
usually  found  of  denoting  the  singular  and  the  plural, 
rhe  Northern  diale<  1  sometimes  contracted  this  verb. 
In  that,  such  tonus  as  Ise,  'I  shall,'  and  others 
of  a  similar  character,  not  unfrequently  make  their 
appearance. 

420.  To    the    fifth    class    of    strong    verbs   (211) 
belongs  :  — 


The  Preterite-Present   Verbs.  461 


(6) 

Magan. 

Sing. 

Present. 

Preterite. 

I. 

mseg,  may, 

meaht    | 
miht       J  ' 

meahte      > 
mihte         i 

meahtest  "> 
mihtest     / ' 

might t 

2. 

3- 

mseg. 

meahte      | 
mihte        / 

PI. 

1,  2,  3. 

magon. 

meahton  ~> 
mihton      / 

421.  Mag  meant,  in  Anglo-Saxon,  '  I  have  power,' 
'  I  am  able,'  but  in  this  signification  its  place  has  been 
taken  by  can.  The  infinitive  magan  or  mugan  is  not 
found  in  Anglo-Saxon,  but  in  Early  English  appears 
in  various  forms,  of  which  mowe(n)  may  be  taken 
as  the  representative,  as  seen  in  the  following 
example  :  — 

For  who  is  that  ne  wolde  hire  glorifie, 
To  mowen  swich  a  knight  don  live  or  die. 

Chaucer,  Troilus  and  Cryseyde,  ii.,  1594. 

Precisely  similar   forms    became    established    for  the 
present  tense,  as  :  — 

Right  so  mcnve  ye  out  of  myn  herte  bringe, 
Swich  vois,  right  as  you  list,  to  laughe  or  pleyne. 

Chaucer,  Legend  of  Good  Women,  line  92. 

The  second  person  singular  of  the  present  tliou  might 
lasted  down  to  the  Middle  English  period,  and  was 


4^2  EnglisJi  Language. 

not  entirely  supplanted  by  mayst  until  the  fifteenth 
century.  Mought,  the  Early  English  variant  of  might, 
has  now  become  dialectic. 

422.    To    the    sixth    class    of    strong   verbs    (221) 


belongs  :  — 

(7) 

Mo  tan. 

Sing. 

Present. 

Preterite. 

1. 

mot,  mote, 

moste,  must, 

2. 

most, 

mostest, 

3- 

mot. 

moste. 

PI. 

1,  2,  3. 

moton. 

moston. 

423.  The  infinitive  is  not  met  with  either  in  Anglo- 
Saxon  or  later  English,  and  the  verb  itself  has  had  a 
history  different  from  most  of  the  others.  It  existed 
in  full  vigor  down  to  the  Middle  English  period.  In 
that  the  present  mot  was  used  in  the  two  senses  of  max 
and  of  must. 

Therfore,  in  stede  of  wepynge  and  preyeres, 
Men  moot  yeve  silver  to  the  poore  freres. 

Chaucer,  Prologue  to  Canterbury  Tales,  line  232. 

But  al  mot  ben  assayed,  hoot  and  cold, 
A  man  mot  ben  a  fool,  or  yong  or  old. 

//'.,  Knighfs  Tale,  line  953. 

In  the  sense  of  may,  the  place  of  mot  was  taken  by 
the  preceding  verb  mceg,  and  in  the  sense  of  mast,  its 
own  weak  preterite  supplanted  it,  and  has  now  come 
to  be  used  both  as  a  present  and  a  preterite.     Must 


The  Preterite-Present   Verbs.  463 

has  now  no  inflection  whatever,  and  to  indicate  certain 
preterite  relations  the  language  has  had  recourse  to 
verb- phrases  based  upon  to  he  obliged.  The  original 
mot  has  practically  disappeared  from  Modern  English. 
Though  it  is  occasionally  heard,  it  is  limited  to  a  few 
phrases,  such  as  so  mote  it  be,  or  to  imitations  of  the 
archaic  style. 

424.  Besides  these,  relics  of  two  other  Anglo-Saxon 
preterite-present  verbs  lasted  down  to  a  comparatively 
late  period.  One  of  these  is  darf,  '  I  need,'  with  its 
weak  preterite  dorfte.  This  verb,  in  Early  English, 
frequently  dropped  the  /,  probably  owing  to  the 
confusion  which  prevailed  to  Some  extent  between  it 
and  dare.  It  was  generally  used  impersonally  with  a 
dependent  dative,  as  will  be  seen  in  the  following 
example  :  — 

And  therfore  this  proverbe  is  seyd  ful  sooth, 
Hym  thar  nat  wene  wel  that  yvele  dooth. 

Chaucer,  Reeve's  Tale,  line  400. 

The  confusion  that  existed  between  this  verb  and 
dare  is  exemplified  in  the  use  of  the  preterite  in  the 
following  line  :  — 

Thou  thrnste  nevere  han  the  more  fere. 

Chaucer,  Troilus  and  Cryseyde,  iii.,  572. 

Here  several  manuscripts  have  durste,  though  the 
context  requires  the  sense  of  '  needest.' 

425.  The  other  verb  is  man,  or  mon,  '  I  intend,' 
with  its  weak  preterite  munJe.     This  verb  has  lasted 


464  English  Language. 

down  to  the  Modern  English  period.  It  has  been 
especially  common  in  the  Northern  dialect  in  the 
forms  moun,  maun,  and  mini,  and  its  prevalence  in 
that  was  largely  due  to  the  influence  of  the  Old  Norse 
munii.  With  the  infinitive  it  frequently  served  as  a 
verbal  phrase  equivalent  to  the  future,  and  can  often 
be  rendered  by  'am  to,'  'am  about  to,'  passing  over 
into  the  sense  of  obligation.     Examples  are  :  — 

I  mun  be  maried  a  Sunday. 
Ralph  Roister  Doister  (Arber's  reprint,  page  87). 

A  gentleman  mun  show  himself  like  a  gentleman. 

BEN  JONSON,  Every  Man  in  his  I  Junior,  act  i.  sc.  1. 

426.  To  this  list  of  preterite-present  verbs  of  the 
early  language  that  still  survive,  in  some  form,  to  our 
day,  there  is  allied  one,  which,  even  in  its  original 
form,  presents  great  irregularities.  This  is  wittan,  one 
of  the  auxiliaries  now  used  by  us  to  express  the  future. 
It  was  origin  illy  a  subjunctive  of  the  preterite,  but 
had  discarded  some  of  the'  forms  belonging  to  the 
subjunctive,  and  taken  those  of  the  indicative  in 
their  place. 

Willan. 

Sing.  Present.  Preterite. 

i.  wille,  wile,  will,  wolde,  would, 

2.  wilt.  woldest, 

3.  wille,  wile.  wolde. 
Pi. 

1,  2,  3.       willaft.  woldon. 


The  Preterite-Present   Verbs.  465 

427.  In  Early  English,  forms  of  the  present  with  0 
instead  of/  were  common,  and  wo/  and  wil  stood  side 
by  side  until  the  fifteenth  century.  Wol,  indeed,  is 
constantly  met  with  in  the  literary  language  of  the 
fourteenth  century,  though  it  never  succeeded  in  driv- 
ing out  wil.     For  example  :  — 

And  at  a  knight  than  wol  I  first  biginne. 

Chaucer,  Prologue  to  Canterbury  Tales,  line  42. 

A  relic  of  this  once  frequent  use  of  wol  has  been  pre- 
served in  the  colloquial  form  won't.  This  is  a  con- 
traction of  wol  not,  which  was  itself  sometimes  found 
in  the  forms  wonnot  or  wonot.  From  this  the  transi- 
tion to  won' 7  was  easy. 

428.  A  negative  form  of  this  verb,  mile,  'will  not,' 
nolde,  '  would  not,'  was  in  existence  during  all  periods 
of  the  language  down  to  the  beginning  of  Modern  Eng- 
lish. Occasional  instances  of  its  occurrence  can  be 
found  later,  though  usually  it  is  employed  in  expres- 
sions like  will  he,  nil!  he,  'will  he,  or  will  he  not,' 
where  there  is  a  designed  contrast  with  the  simple 
verb  ;  such  as  is  exemplified  in  Shakspeare's  "Taming 
of  the  Shrew,"  act  ii.  scene  1  :  — 

Will  you,  nillyou,  I  will  marry  you. 

The  colloquial  though  little  used  willy,  nitty  still  pre- 
serves the  negative  verb. 

429.  Apparently,  by  analogy  with  the  preterite- 
present  verbs,  the  verb  need  frequently  drops  the  -s 
of  the  third  person  singular  of  the  present  tense  when 


466  English  Language. 

followed  by  the  infinitive  of  another  verb.  '  He  need 
not  do  it,'  for  instance,  is  a  method  of  expression 
much  more  common  than  '  he  needs  not  do  it.'  This 
usage  certainly  goes  back  to  the  beginning  of  the 
sixteenth  century,  and  is  perhaps  earlier. 

430.  Beside  the  preterite-present  verbs,  there  are 
three  others  which  deserve  special  mention.  One  of 
these  is  the  verb  do. 

Don. 

Present.  Preterite. 

1.  do,  dyde, 

2.  dest,  dydest, 

3.  de'8.  dyde. 

I,  2,  3.    do"8.  dydon. 

431.  The  modern  forms  exhibit  little  variation  from 
the  Anglo-Saxon,  except  that  in  the  second  and  third 
persons  of  the  present  singular  they  have  abandoned 
the  original  vowel-variation.  The  Early  English  doth, 
based  upon  the  Anglo-Saxon  dod,  lasted  as  a  present 
plural  into  the  Modern  English  period  (343).  It  is 
found  frequently  in  Shakspeare,  though  in  modern 
editions  it  is  usually  changed,  without  notice,  into  the 
standard  form  do.  The  second  person  singular  doest 
is  used  as  a  principal  verb,  and  not  as  an  auxiliary, 
whereas  the  other  form  dost  is  used  regularly  as  an 
auxiliary,  rarely  as  a  principal  verb.  A  similar  state- 
im  lit  may  be  made  of  the  two  forms  in  -th  of  the 
third  person,  doeth  ami  doth. 


432- 


The  Irr 

egular 

Verb 

'Go.' 

Gan. 

Present. 

Preterite. 

i-    ga, 

eode, 

2.    gaist, 

eodest, 

3.    ga??S. 

eode. 

2,  3.    gl«. 

eodon. 

467 


433.  From  the  paradigm  given  above,  it  will  be  seen 
that  the  verb  go,  even  in  Anglo-Saxon,  had  supplied  its 
preterite  by  a  form  taken  from  another  stem.  Eode 
continued  to  be  used  during  the  Old  English  period, 
and  appeared  usually  in  the  form  yede,  and  occasionally 
yode  ;  but  early  in  the  Middle  English  period  it  showed 
clear  signs  of  falling  into  disuse.  It  occurs  but  three 
times  in  Chaucer,  always  in  the  form  yede(n),  as,  for 
example  :  — 

Troilus  ...  in  his  chaumber  sit,  and  hath  abyden 

Til  two  or  three  of  his  messagers  yeden 

For  Pandarus. 

Troilus  and  Cryseyde,  ii.,  937. 

It  is,  however,  more  common  in  Langland,  and  occa- 
sionally appears  in  the  poetry  of  the  fifteenth  century. 

434.  In  the  sixteenth  century  the  existence  of  the 
two  forms  yede  and  yode  led  to  a  curious  error  on  the 
part  of  those  authors  who  were  seeking  to  reproduce 
the  diction  of  the  past.  Yede,  often  spelled  yeed  or 
yead,  was  treated  as  an  infinitive  or  present,  of  which 
yode  was  the  preterite.  Thus  Sackville,  in  the  "  In- 
duction to  the  Mirror  for  Magistrates,"  has  the  fol- 
lowing lines  :  — 


468  English  Language. 

Here  enter'd  we,  and  yeding  forth,  anon 
An  horrible  loathly  lake  we  might  discern. 

Line  196. 

Similar  usage  can  be  found  in  Spenser,  as  follows  :  — 

Then  bad  the  knight  his  lady  yede  aloof. 

Faerie  Queeiie,  I.,  xi.,  5. 

So  long  he  yode,  yet  no  adventure  found, 

Which  Fame  of  her  shrill  trompet  worthy  reedes. 

lb.,  II.,  vii.,  2. 

435.  To  supply  the  place  of  code,  recourse  was 
had  later  to  another  Anglo-Saxon  verb,  wendan,  which 
had  wende  and  went  as  preterite  and  past  participle. 
To  this  verb  strictly  belong  the  compound  tenses  / 
hare  went,  I  had  went,  which  are  sometimes  met  with 
late  in  the  Middle  English  period.1  The  original 
preterite  was  wende  or  wente.  The  latter  became  the 
regular  form  in  Old  English,  and  in  its  shortened 
form  went  was  at  last  adopted  as  the  preterite  of  go 
in  place  of  yede.  The  participle  went  also  disap- 
peared;  and  the  verb  wenden,  which  had  now  become 
wend  by  the  dropping  of  the  final  -en,  developed  in 
its  turn  the  regular  form  wended. 

436.  Gangan,  a  fuller  form  of  this  verb,  can  be 
found  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  period  with  a  preterite 
geong.  The  present  tense  of  gan  adopted  throughout 
in  Old   English  the  vowel  of  the  first  person,  though 

'They  occur  occasionally  much  later,  e.g.,  "As  if  the  scholars 
h.iil  went  from  Cambridge  to  Northampton."  —  Diary  of  Thomas 

I  I'Mi  ii'-,  May  9,  1730. 


The  Substantive    Verb.  469 

even  in  Middle  English  the  form  geth,  '  goes,'  occa- 
sionally makes  its  appearance,  as  will  be  seen  by  the 
following  example  :  — 

For  vengeaunce  of  his  sones  deth 
None  other  grace  ther  ne  geth. 

Gower,  Confessio  Amantis,  Book  V. 

Go,  like  do,  was  frequently  used  in  the  Midland  dia- 
lect as  a  past  participle.  The  past  participle  of  the 
compound  agan  lost  in  Old  English  its  participial  use, 
and  came  to  be  employed  as  an  adjective,  or  adverb, 
and  still  survives  in  ago  or  agone. 

437.  Finally,  there  remains  the  substantive  verb. 
In  its  various  parts  three  roots  have  been,  and  still 
are,  represented.  In  the  form  of  the  verb  regularly 
used  in  Anglo-Saxon,  the  root  es  is  found  in  the  pres- 
ent tense ;  the  root  wes  in  the  preterite,  the  infinitive, 
and  the  present  participle.  The  root  ben  furnished 
additional  and  independent  forms  for  the  present,  the 
infinitive,  and  the  present  participle. 

438.  Of  this  most  important  of  verbs,  it  is  desirable 
to  give  the  history  of  most  of  the  parts,  and  each  will 
be  considered  separately.  We  begin  with  the  two 
present  tenses. 


Sing.    Indicative. 

Sn 

bjunctive. 

Indicative. 

Subjunctive 

I.           eom, 

sie, 

beo(m), 

beo, 

2.         eart, 

sie, 

bist, 

beo, 

3.         is. 

sie. 

MS. 

beo. 

PI. 

1,  2,  3.     sind,  sindon 

.    sin. 

b5o«. 

beon. 

47°  English  Language. 

439.  The  forms  of  the  indicative  singular,  eom,  eart, 
is,  have  been  preserved,  with  little  change,  through 
all  the  periods  of  the  language.  The  plural  sind,  or 
sindon,  however,  did  not  last  long  beyond  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  period,  nor  did  the  subjunctive  sic.  In  the 
Northumbrian  dialect  am  was  the  form  corresponding 
to  the  West-Saxon  com,  and  in  the  plural  of  that 
dialect  earon,  or  aron,  was  found  side  by  side  with 
sind,  or  sindon.  Earon  has  also  been  pointed  out  as 
occurring  in  a  very  few  instances  in  West-Saxon. 
Still  it  was  to  the  Northern  dialect,  aided  by  its  exclu- 
sive use  in  the  language  of  the  Scandinavian  invaders 
of  England,  that  we  owe  the  general  adoption  into 
our  tongue  of  are  as  the  plural  of  the  present  tense. 
It  was  a  gradual  process.  When  sind  was  given  up, 
the  plural  be,  in  the  forms  bcth,  ben,  and  be,  took  its 
place  in  the  dialect  of  the  South  and  of  the  Midland. 
This  continued  to  be  the  case  for  several  centuries. 
Even  at  the  beginning  of  the  Middle  English  period, 
are  was  far  from  common  in  the  Midland  dialect. 
( lhaucer  almost  invariably  uses  be  or  ben  as  the 
plural  of  the  present ;  and  the  same  remark  is  true 
of  Langland  and  (lower,  though  are  is  more  common 
with  them  than  with  Chaucer.  The  Northern  writers, 
however,  commonly  use  are.  From  them  the  practice 
extended  widely  in  the  latter  part  of  the  fifteenth 
century,  and  became  thoroughly  established  in  the 
sixteenth. 

440.  Be,  which,  during  the  Anglo-Saxon  period, 
was  largely  used  as  a  future,   maintained  itself  firmly 


The  Substantive   Verb.  471 

as  the  regular  substantive  verb  in  the  Southern  dia- 
lect. In  the  singular  form,  be,  beest,  beth,  it  not  only 
continues  to  this  day  to  be  heard  in  popular  or 
dialectic  speech,  but  at  various  periods  has  not  unfre- 
quently  made  its  way  into  the  language  of  literature. 
The  following  paradigm  will  show  the  most  common 
forms  the  inflection  of  its  present  tense  assumed  in 
the  various  dialects  :  — 

1.  be, 

2.  beest, 

3.  beth,  bes. 

1,  2,  3.   beth,  ben,  bin,  be,  bes. 

441.  The  plural  be,  furthermore,  was  constantly 
used  as  an  indicative  form  down  to  the  seventeenth 
century,  and  even  later,  and  is  still  occasionally  em- 
ployed in  poetry,  especially  in  the  phrase  there  be. 
The  tendency  showed  itself,  in  the  sixteenth  century, 
to  limit  the  verb  be  to  the  subjunctive,  and  this  has 
now  become  the  established  general  rule.1  The  plural 
forms  ben  and  bin  have  also  been  erroneously  re- 
garded by  some  writers  as  singular,  as  in  the  fol- 
lowing passage  :  — 

Of  tragic  muses  shepherds  con  no  skill; 
Enough  is  them,  if  Cupid  ben  displeased, 
To  sing  his  praise  on  slender,  oaten  pipe.'2 

This  error  has  never,  however,  been  common. 

1  See  page  167. 

2  Peele,  Arraignment  of  Paris,  act  iv.  sc.  1. 


472 


English  Language. 


442.  The  preterite  of  the  substantive  verb  is  the 
preterite  of  a  strong  verb,  of  Class  V.  (219),  partially 
obsolete  in  Anglo-Saxon,  but  fully  preserved  in  Gothic. 
It  was  thus  inflected  :  — 


Sing. 

Indicative. 

Subjunctive, 

I. 

WKS, 

wrere, 

2. 

WEere, 

wrere, 

3- 

WKS. 

wsere. 

PI. 

I,  2,  3. 

wseron 

wSren. 

443.  This  is  the  only  preterite  which  has  retained 
in  Modern  English  the  vowel-variation  once  distin- 
guishing from  the  first  and  third  persons  of  the  in- 
dicative singular,  the  three  persons  of  the  plural,  the 
second  person  of  the  singular,  and  all  the  persons  of 
the  subjunctive.  It  also  exhibits  clearly  what  was 
found  in  several  Anglo-Saxon  verbs,  —  the  transition 
of  the  letter  s  into  r,  so  that,  instead  of  saying  was 
or  wese  in  the  plural,  we  say  were  (14).  During  the 
Middle  English  period  this  preterite  presented  the 
following  inflections :  — 


Sing. 

Indicative. 

Subjunctive 

I. 

was, 

were, 

2. 

were, 

were, 

3- 

was. 

were. 

PI. 

• 

If  2,  3- 

were(n). 

were(n} 

444.    These  forms  have  remained  substantially  un- 
changed during  all  the  periods  of  the  English  language. 


The  Substantive    Verb.  473 

An  exception  is  to  be  made  in  the  case  of  the  second 
person  singular,  which,  as  is  seen,  is  strictly  were ; 
and,  in  fact,  thou  were  has  been  always  in  use  in 
poetry.  But  the  abandonment  of  vowel-change  in  the 
second  person  of  the  preterite  of  strong  verbs  natu- 
rally led  to  the  general  disuse  of  this  form.  As  early, 
certainly,  as  the  Middle  English  period  the  form  wast 
had  appeared,  as  the  following  extract  from  the  Wy- 
cliffite  translation  of  the  Bible  shows  :  — 

Whanne  sche  hadde  seyn  Petre  warmynge  him,  sche  bihold- 
inge  him  seith,  And  thou  wast  x  with  Jhesu  of  Nazareth. 

Mark  xiv.  67. 

The  way  for  this  form  had  been  previously  prepared 
by  the  not  unfrequent  employment  in  Old  English  of 
was  for  the  second  person.  Still  it  was  not  till  the 
sixteenth  century  that  wast  came  into  much  use. 
From  that  time  on,  it  tended  gradually  to  supplant 
the  original  form,  especially  in  the  language  of  prose. 

445.  But  along  with  were  and  wast  there  sprang 
up,  probably  in  the  early  part  of  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury, a  new  form,  wert,  which  apparently  was  devel- 
oped after  the  analogy  of  shal-t,  wil-t,  and  ar-t.  This 
is  met  with  frequently  in  the  Elizabethan  dramatists, 
and  seems  to  have  been  then  preferred  by  a  few 
writers  to  wast.  It  has  always  been  common  in 
poetry.  To  that  kind  of  composition  it,  like  were,  is 
in  truth  now  mainly  confined  ;  but  this  may  be  due  to 

1  liven  here  other  MSS.,  as  well  as  Purvey's  recension,  have 
were. 


474  English  Language. 

the  fact  that  the  second  person  itself  of  the  verb  is 
little  used  in  prose. 

446.  The  infinitives  wesan  and  beon  occur  not 
unfrequently  during  the  Anglo-Saxon  period.  By  the 
end  of  it  the  former  had  disappeared,  and  the  latter 
came  into  so  general  use  that  it  has  given  its  name  to 
the  substantive  verb.  The  same  statement  is  true  of 
the  present  participles  wesende  and  blonde,  and  the 
imperatives  wes  and  beo.  In  each  instance  the  forms 
of  wesan  were  early  supplanted  by  those  of  beon. 
None  of  these  verbal  roots  exhibited  a  past  participle 
during  the  Anglo-Saxon  period.  The  existing  form 
been,  which  originated  in  the  Old  English  period, 
usually  appeared  for  a  long  time  as  y-be,  i-be,  or 
simply  be. 

447.  Dialectic  and  peculiar  forms  of  the  various 
parts  of  the  substantive  verb  are  to  be  found  during 
all  periods  of  its  history.  These  it  is  neither  possible 
nor  desirable  to  enumerate  here.  One  thing,  how- 
ever, is  worthy  of  special  mention.  In  some  of  the 
Northern  dialects,  is  was  early  used  for  all  persons  of 
the  present  singular  and  plural,  and  was  for  the  same 
numbers  and  persons  of  the  preterite.  Examples  of 
such  employment  have  been  given  in  Chaucer's  imi- 
tation of  the  speech  of  the  North.1  From  that  quar- 
ter is  sometimes  made  its  way  into  the  language  of 
literature,  especially  in  the  writings  of  the  Elizabethan 
dramatists.  The  following  examples  from  Shakspeare 
will  illustrate  the  practice  :  — 

1  See  page  1 20. 


The  Substantive    Verb.  475 

He  does  smile  his  face  into  more  lines  than  is  in  the  new 
map  with  the  augmentation  of  the  Indies. 

Twelfth  Night,  act  iii.  sc.  2. 

What  manners  is  in  this  ? 

Romeo  and  Juliet,  act  v.  sc.  3. 

This  usage  is  very  common,  when  the  substantive 
verb  is  followed  by  its  subject,  and  accompanied 
(generally  preceded)  by  here,  where,  but  especially 
there.  With  this  last  the  singular  verb  seems  to  have 
been  generally  and  perhaps  universally  employed  in 
Elizabethan  dramatic  literature.     For  example  :  — 

Thou  think'st  there  is  no  more  such  shapes  as  he. 

Tempest,  act  i.  sc.  2. 

There  is  tears  for  his  love. 

Julius  Ctzsar,  act  iii.  sc.  2. 

This  method  of  expression  has  indeed  lasted  down 
to  our  own  time,  and  is  very  common  in  colloquial 
speech. 

448.  A  similar  usage  of  was  has  been  less  preva- 
lent,1 but  its  employment  in  the  plural  with  a  personal 
pronoun  as  subject  has  been  at  times  far  more  so. 
This  is  true  at  least  of  the  second  person,  as  used  dur- 
ing the  eighteenth  century.  You  was,  instead  of  you 
were,  became  then  so  common,  that  it  seemed  merely 
a  question  of  time  when  the  latter  would   disappear 

1  All  things  was  quiet. 
More,  Richard  III.  (reprint  of  1812,  page  541). 


476  English  Language. 

altogether.  The  fashion  of  so  employing  it  had  pretty 
generally  died  out,  however,  by  the  end  of  the  century. 
But  even  when  the  employment  of  yon  was  prevailed, 
cases  of  the  use  of  was  in  the  first  and  third  persons 
of  the  plural  were  exceedingly  rare. 

With  the  verb  ends  the  foregoing  brief  survey  of 
the  changes  that  have  taken  place  in  the  inflection 
of  English.  As  a  result  of  this  examination,  a  few 
general  inferences  can  be  safely  drawn.  One  of 
them  is,  that  the  history  of  language,  when  looked  at 
from  the  purely  grammatical  point  of  view,  is  little 
else  than  the  history  of  corruptions.  The  account 
contained  in  the  preceding  pages  is  largely  a  record  of 
endings  that  have  been  dropped,  or  perverted  from 
their  proper  use  ;  of  declensions  that  have  been  inter- 
mixed ;  of  conjugations  that  have  been  confounded ; 
of  inflections  in  every  part  of  speech  that  have  either 
passed  away  altogether,  or  have  been  confused  with 
one  another,  and  consequently  misapplied.  There 
are  but  few  forms  in  use,  which,  judged  by  a  standard 
previously  existing,  would  not  be  regarded  as  gross 
barbarisms.  Terminations  and  expressions  which  had 
their  origin  in  ignorance  or  misapprehension  are  now 
accepted  by  all  ;  and  the  employment  of  what  was  at 
first  a  blunder  has  often  become  subsequently  a  test 
of  propriety  of  speech. 

Nothing  of  this  need  be  denied  or  even  ques- 
tioned ;  all  of  it  may  he  ungrudgingly  admitted.  But 
it  is  equally  true  that  these  grammatical  changes,  or 


Purity  of  tJic  Speech.  4.J7 

corruptions,  if  one  is  disposed  so  to  call  them,  have 
had  no  injurious  effects  upon  the  development  of  the 
language  ;  or  if,  in  single  instances,  they  have  been 
followed  by  injurious  effects,  these  have  been  more 
than  counterbalanced  by  benefits  which  have  been  de- 
rived from  other  quarters.  For  the  operation  of  these 
changes  is  merely  on  the  outside.  It  is  rare,  indeed, 
that  they  impair,  or  even  modify  in  the  slightest,  the 
real  force  of  expression.  It  would  now  be  looked 
upon  as  improper  to  say  /  have  shook  for  /  have 
shaken;  yet,  in  the  days  of  Shakspeare  and  Milton, 
the  former  was  as  allowable  as  the  latter ;  and  at  this 
time  all  of  us  in  a  similar  way  use  the  preterite  for  the 
past  participle  in  /  have  stood,  or  /  have  understood, 
and  are  not  even  conscious  in  so  doing  that  we  are 
guilty  of  what  is,  in  strict  grammar,  a  barbarism. 
Changes  of  a  character  such  as  the  foregoing — and 
most  changes  are  of  this  character  —  affect  merely  the 
garb  of  speech,  not  speech  itself.  To  suppose  that 
the  English  tongue  has  suffered  any  loss  of  strength, 
that  it  has  entered  upon  a  period  of  decline,  because 
we  now  say,  for  instance,  stood,  where  etymologically 
we  ought  to  say  stonden,  is  no  evidence  whatever  of 
decay  on  its  part :  it  is  merely  evidence  of  ignorance 
on  our  part  of  what  constitutes  the  real  life  of  lan- 
guage. 

It  is,  at  the  present  time,  a  fashion  to  talk  of  our 
speech  as  being  in  some  way  less  pure  and  vigorous 
than  it  was  in  the  days  of  Alfred  ;  mainly,  because 
then  it  had,  on  the  one  hand,  fewer  foreign  words, 


478  English  Language. 

and,  on  the  other,  more  inflections,  more  formative 
affixes,  and  therefore  more  capacity  for  self-develop- 
ment. But  the  test  of  the  value  of  any  tongue  is  not 
the  grammatical  or  linguistic  resources  which  it  may 
be  supposed  to  possess,  it  is  the  use  which  it  makes 
of  the  resources  it  does  possess.  It  is,  on  the  very 
face,  an  absurdity  to  speak  of  a  form  of  a  language 
which  has  been  made  the  vehicle  of  one  of  the 
great  literatures  of  the  world,  which  has  been  found 
fully  adequate  to  convey  all  the  conceptions  of  genera- 
tions of  illustrious  men,  as  being  inferior  in  power  to 
a  form  of  it,  which,  whatever  its  theoretical  capacities, 
has  embodied  in  its  literature,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
little  that  is  worth  reading  or  remembering.  As  a 
mere  instrument  of  expression,  there  is  not  the  slight- 
est question  as  to  the  immense  superiority  of  the 
English  of  the  nineteenth  century  over  that  of  the 
ninth.  It  is  equally  proper  to  say  that  the  former 
is  just  as  pure  as  the  latter,  unless  we  restrict  that 
epithet,  as  applied  to  language,  to  the  narrow  sense  of 
being  free  from  words  that  are  not  of  native  origin. 
Even  in  this  respect  there  was  no  difference  in  the 
influences  that  operated  upon  the  two  forms  of  the 
speech  ;  for  the  disposition  to  use  foreign  terms  was 
just  as  potent  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  period  as  now, 
though  the  necessity  for  them  was  naturally  far  less 
pressing.  No  tongue  can  possibly  be  corrupted  by 
alien  words  which  convey  ideas  that  cannot  be  ex- 
pressed by  native  ones.  Yet  this  elementary  truth 
is   far  from    being  universally  accepted ;   for  it  is  a 


Stability  of  the  Speech.  479 

lesson  which    many   learn   with   difficulty,  and    some 
never  learn  at  all,  that  purism  is  not  purity. 

Another  inference  concerns  the  assurance  we  may 
feel  as  to  the  stability  of  our  speech  derived  from  the 
influence,  already  immense  and  steadily  increasing,  of 
the  language  of  literature.  This  is  something  that 
places  tongues  now  in  use  in  a  position  entirely  differ- 
ent from  that  occupied  by  those  employed  in  any  pre- 
vious period  in  the  history  of  the  world.  The  cultivated 
speech  is  with  us  no  longer  confined  to  a  small  class 
which  an  irruption  of  barbarism,  or  a  social  and  politi- 
cal revolution,  may  subject  to  the  sway  of  those  who 
speak  a  foreign  or  a  corrupt  idiom.  It  is  the  language 
of  vast  communities,  and,  through  the  operation  of 
manifold  agencies,  is  daily  growing  in  universality  and 
power.  The  whole  tremendous  machinery  of  educa- 
tion is  constantly  at  work  to  strengthen  it,  to  broaden 
it,  to  bring  into  conformity  with  it  the  speech  of  the 
humblest  as  well  as  of  the  highest.  Day  by  day  dia- 
lectic differences  disappear ;  day  by  day  the  standard 
tongue,  in  which  is  embodied  classical  English  litera- 
ture, is  widening  and  deepening  its  hold  upon  every 
class.  The  history  here  given,  brief  as  it  is,  shows 
how  violent  and  extensive  have  been  the  changes  that 
have  taken  place  in  our  inflection  since  the  ninth 
century  ;  and  yet,  of  those  changes,  how  few  in  num- 
ber and  slight  in  importance  are  such  as  belong  to 
the  last  three  hundred  years.  If  the  social  and 
political  agencies  now  in  being  continue  to  exist,  we 
may  confidently  expect  that  the  language  of  the  future 


480  English  Language. 

will  never  materially  vary  from  what  it  is  to-day. 
Movement  there  must  be.  That  is  an  essential  char- 
acteristic of  a  living  speech.  But  while  differences 
will  be  developed,  they  will  not  be  important  either 
in  their  nature  or  extent.  Pronunciation  may  perhaps 
be  most  affected  ;  but  words  and  their  meanings,  gram- 
matical inflections  and  constructions,  are  no  longer 
likely  to  move  away  on  any  large  scale  from  usage 
which  a  great  literature  has  made  more  or  less  familiar 
to  all,  and  to  the  readers  and  students  and  creators  of 
which  every  generation  adds  a  constantly  increasing 
number.  English,  in  the  form  which  it  has  had  essen- 
tially for  the  last  three  hundred  years,  may  doubtless 
disappear  ;  but  its  destruction,  if  it  ever  takes  place, 
will  be  under  conditions  such  as  have  never  before 
existed,  and  will  be  owing  to  agencies  which  differ 
wholly  from  those  that  have  brought  about  the  ruin  of 
any  of  the  great  cultivated  languages  of  the  past. 


INDEX  TO  SUBJECTS  AND  PERSONS. 


Accusative  case,  197,  198,  209, 
214,  215,  217,  218. 

Addison,  Joseph  (1 672-1 719), 
quoted,  275,  282. 

Adjective,  the,  29,  96,  150,  241- 
255;  nominal,  weak,  or  defi- 
nite declension  of,  243-247; 
pronominal,  strong,  or  indefi- 
nite declension  of,  243-247. 

Affixes,  loss  and  gain  of,  107- 
109,  112. 

Alfred  the  Great  (r.  871-901), 

25.  27>  32,  33.  42,  44- 
Alliterative  verse,  30,  91-93. 
Angles,  the,  22-24,  27- 
Anglo-French  speech,  the,  74- 

76. 
Anglo-Saxon  alphabet,  the,  34- 

36. 
Anglo-Saxon  Chronicle,  the,  32. 
Anglo-Saxon  language,  the,  28, 

83,  87,  88. 
Anglo-Saxon  literature,  29-34. 
Anglo-Saxon  version  of  Bible, 

quoted,  281,  292;   gospel  of 

Nicodemus,  quoted,  284. 
Anglo-Saxon    words,     loss    of, 

106. 
Armorican  tongue,  the,  5. 
"  Arthur  and  Merlin,"  poem  of, 

quoted,  62. 


Article,  the  definite,  259,  260. 
Article,  the  indefinite,  299,  300. 
Aryan.     See  Indo-European. 
Ascham,  Roger  (15 15-1568),  71. 
Augustine,  St.  (died  604),  41. 

Bacon,    Francis    (1561-1626), 
72,    179,   433;    quoted,   166, 

336,  458- 
Barbour,   John   (1316?— 1395), 

124,  135. 
Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  167. 
Bentley,  Richard  (1 662-1 742), 

quoted,  275. 
Beowulf,  epic  of,  31. 
Bernicia,  kingdom  of,  23. 
Bible,   Authorized    Version,   of, 

70,  164^169,  ,354,  41X433; 

quoted,  166,  2S1V 
Black-letter,  35.-' 
"Blickling  Homilies,"  262,276. 
Bohemian  tongue,  the,  4. 
Breton  tongue,  the,  5. 
Bulgarian  tongue,  the,  4. 
Bunyan,     John     (1628-1688), 

quoted,  456. 
Byron,  Lord  (1 788-1824),  quot- 
ed, 336. 


Gedmon  (about  670),  31 ;  quot- 
ed, 265. 


481 


482         Index  to  Subjects  and  Persons. 


Caesar's  invasion  of  Britain,  18. 

Canute  (r.  1014-1035),  44. 

Capgrave,  John  (1393-1464), 
quoted,  279. 

Case,  197,  198.  See  Nomina- 
tive,  Genitive,  etc. 

Caxton,  William  (1422  7-1491 ), 

^  158;    quoted,   158-160,  433. 

Celtic  branch  of  Indo-Euro- 
pean, 5. 

Chaucer  (died  1400),  70,  71, 
98-101,  119,  124,  132,  133, 
136,  138,  144,  148-151,  164, 
168,  208,  277,  333,  334,  346, 
388,409,  422,  438;  quoted, 
75,  IOO,  I20,  174,  280,  281, 
295,  298,  299,  423,  437,  444, 
458,  461,  462,  463,  465,  467. 

Coke,  Sir  Edward  (1552-1634), 
287,  288. 

Comparison  of  the  adjective, 
247-255;  irregular  compari- 
son, 252,  253;  double  com- 
parison, 251,  252;  compari- 
son with  -er  and  -est,  248- 
250;  comparison  with  more 
and  most,  250,  251 ;  compar- 
ison of  chief,  supreme,  per- 
fect, etc.,  252;  comparison 
with  -ma  and  -mest,  254,  255. 

Compound  nouns,  42,  109,  no. 

Conjugation,  old  or  new,  303, 
305;  conflict  of  the  two 
conjugations,  307-312.  See 
Verbs,  strong  and  weak. 

( lornish  tongue,  the,  5. 

Cornwall,  John  (about  1350), 
63,  64. 

(  ow  ley,  Abraham  (1618-1667), 
quoted,  439. 

"Cursor  Mundi,"  120,  121. 

Cymric  branch  of  Celtic,  5,  18, 
24,  38-40. 

'  Yneu  ulf,  31. 


Daniel,    Samuel    (1562-1619), 

quoted,  414. 
Danish  language,  the,  9. 
Dative  case,  the,  197,  198,  209, 

214,  215,  217,  218,  220. 
Decker,       Thomas       (1570?- 

1641  ?),  167. 
Declension    of    the    adjective, 

201,  242-247. 
Declension  of   the  noun,  198- 

201,  209-213;    in  o,  i,  and  u, 

198-200,     209-21 1;     in    -n, 

200,  211-213;  confusion  of 
the  noun  declensions,  213- 
223. 

Declension    of    the    pronouns, 

201.  See  Pronouns. 
Deira,  kingdom  of,  23. 
Demonstrative     pronoun,    the, 

257-263. 
Dialogus  de  Scaccario,  102. 
Double    negative    in    English, 

the,  174. 
Douglas,  C-awin  (i474?-i522), 

136. 
Dryden,     John     (1631-1700), 

167. 
Dual  number,  the,  98,  198,  263, 

264,  401. 
Dunbar,     William     (1465?- 

1530?).  i3»- 
Dutch  language,  the,  10. 

"  Early    English  "    period,   the, 

88,  206. 
East    Anglia,  kingdom    of,  23, 

44. 
East  Germanic  division  of  the 

Teutonic,  8. 
East  Midland  dialect,  122,  124, 

,  133- 
Edward  the  Confessor  (r.  1042- 

1066),  50. 
Egbert  (r.  802-839),  25,  26. 


Index  to  Subjects  and  Persons.  483 


Elene,  Anglo-Saxon   poem    of, 

437- 
English    used  by  nobility,  55- 

57-  59.  62. 
Erse  tongue,  the,  5. 
Essex,  kingdom  of,  22. 
Ethandun,  battle  of,  44. 
Exeter  Book,  the,  31. 

Finnish  tongue,  the,  12. 
Flemish  tongue,  the,  10. 
Fletcher,    John     (1 579-1 625), 

167;  quoted,  129,  275,  414. 
Florio,  John(i553?-i625),  167. 
Frankish,  the  Low,  10,  196. 
French  language,  the,  6,  7,  73, 

74- 
French  language   in    England, 

48,  5*.  53.  55>  57-6°-67.  74- 

81,  102,  132. 
French  words  in   English,  85, 

102-106,  124,  138,  144,  175. 
Frisian  or  Friesic  tongue,  the, 

11,  196. 

Gadhelic  branch   of  Celtic,    5, 

39.  40. 
Gaelic  tongue,  the,  5,  134. 
Gender,  natural  and  grammati- 
cal, 157,  210. 
Genitive  case,    197,    19S,    209, 

214,  217,  219,  220,  221,  242. 
Genitive  ending  in  -s,  96,  126. 
German.     See    High     German 

and  Low  German. 
Giraldus    Cambrensis    (1146?- 

1220?),  1 17. 
Gothic  tongue,  the,  8,  195,  196, 

198,  199,  202,  203,  205,  303. 
Gower,  John  (i325?-i4o8),  69, 

7*.  333,   438,  443;    quoted, 

469. 
Greek   language,    the,    4,    175, 

177,  197. 


Greene,  Robert  (i56o?-i592), 
quoted,  274,  275,  291,  337, 

377- 

Harold  (r.  1066),  50,  51. 

Hastings,  battle  of,  51. 

Hearne,  Thomas  (1 678—1735), 
quoted,  468. 

Hebrew  tongue,  the,  12. 

Heliand,  the,  10. 

Hellenic  branch  of  Indo-Euro- 
pean, 4. 

Henry  I.  (r.  HOO-1135),  54. 

Henry  II.  (r.  1154-1189),  57, 
102. 

Henry  III.  (r.  1216-1272),  56. 

Henry  IV.  (r.  1399-1413), 
76-78. 

Henry  V.   (r.  1413-1422),  77- 

79- 
Henry  of  Huntingdon  (1084?- 

"55)»  53- 

Henry   the   Minstrel,  or  Blind 

Harry  (about  14S0),  136. 
Henryson,      Robert      (1430?- 

1506?),  136. 
Higden,    Ralph    (died    1364), 

60,  123;    quoted,  61,  1 1 8. 
High   German    speech,  the,  9, 

196,  198,  204. 
His   as   sign    of    the  genitive, 

281-283. 
Hooker,        Richard       (1554?- 

1600),  179. 
Hungarian  language,  the,  12. 

i-  as  a  prefix  to  the  participle, 
387-390. 

Icelandic  tongue,  the,  9. 

Imperative  mode,  the,  156,  303, 
440. 

Indefinite  pronouns,  299,  300. 

Indian  branch  of  Indo-Euro- 
pean, 3. 


484         Index  to  Subjects  and  Persons. 


Indicative  mode,  the,  168,  169, 

1 74,  3°3- 

Indo-European  family  of  lan- 
guages, I-II. 

Indo-European  inflections,  194- 
198. 

Indo-Germanic.  See    Indo- 

European. 

Infinitive,  the,  303,  442-446; 
the  gerundial  infinitive,  443- 
445;  not  preceded  by  to, 
444;  the  past  infinitive  fol- 
lowing a  past  tense,  445, 
446. 

Inflection  in    English,  loss    of, 

85.  94-99,  193- 

Ingulph's  History,  52. 

Instrumental  case,  the,  197, 
198,  209,  257,  258,  261,  290. 

Interrogative  Pronouns,  the, 
289-293. 

Iranian  branch  of  Indo-Euro- 
pean, 4. 

Irish  tongue,  the,  5. 

Irregular  Plurals  of  the  Noun, 
222-225,  229-240. 

Italic  branch  of  Indo-Euro- 
pean, 6. 

Italian  language,  the,  6,  175. 

James  I.  of  England  (r.  1603- 

1625),  135. 
James  I.  oi  Scotland  (r.  1424- 

1437),  135,  43«- 
Johnson,    Dr.    Samuel    (1709- 

1784),  181,  182;  quoted,  (  59. 
Jonsun,     Ben      (i573?-io37), 

167,  301,  381,410,  412,  423, 

424;    quoted,   29 1,  301,  409, 

412,  464. 
Jutes,  the,  22. 

Kent,  kingdom  of,  22,  41. 
Kentish  dialect,  the,  26,  123. 


Kyd,  Thomas  (i557 ?-» 595 ?)» 

his     "  Spanish        Tragedy  " 
quoted,  292. 

Ladino  speech,  the,  7. 
Langland's  "  Piers  Plowman," 

66,69,279,333,438;  quoted, 

67,  92,  170,  410. 
Latimer,  Hugh  ( 14S5  ?-i 555), 

quoted,  450. 
Latin  language,  the,  6,  197. 
Latin  element  in   English,  20, 

37,  38,40-43,  105,  145,  175- 

177,  179. 
Laws  and  law  proceedings   in 

English,  64-66,  79,  80. 
Layamon's    "Brut,"    89,     103, 

281. 
Lettish  tongue,  the,  4. 
Lindsay,     Sir     David     (1490- 

.1555),  L56- 

Lithuanic  speech,  the,  4. 

Lodge,  Thomas  (1558?-! 625), 
quoted,  274,  455. 

Longfellow,  Henry  W.  (1S07- 
1882),  quoted,  323,  348. 

Low  1'rankish,  the,  IO,  196. 

Low  German  tongues,  the,  10. 

Low  Germanic  group  of  Teu- 
tonic languages,  10,  12,  196. 

Mandeville,  Sir  John,  69. 
Marlowe,   Christopher    (1564- 
1 593),  4l»°ted,  274,275,  34S, 

455- 
Manx  tongue,  the,  6. 

Matthew  of  Westminster,  56. 

Mercia,  kingdom  of,  23. 

Mercian  dialect,  the,  26,  122. 

Mid. lie  English  period,  the,  87, 
206. 

Midland  dialect  of  English,  92, 
1 18-120,  122,  123,  128,  130- 
134,  138,  139,  168,  206. 


Index  to  Subjects  and  Persons.  485 


Midland  dialect,  East,  122,  124, 

133- 

Midland    dialect,    West,     122, 

I3I-I33- 

Milton,  John  (1 608-1674),  167, 

179,  269,  354,  381;    quoted, 

320,  347,  389. 
Modern    English    period,    87, 

161-189. 
Moeso-Gothic  tongue,  the,  9. 
More,  SirThomas(i48o-i535), 

quoted,  277,  337,  455,  475. 

Netherlandish  speech,  the,  10, 

196. 
Nominative  case,  197,  198,209, 

217,  218.  220-222. 
Normandy,  province  of,  49,  50, 

58,  60,  73-75. 
Norman-trench,    the,    49,    50, 

102,  103. 
Norman-French     speech,     the, 

67,  73.  74.  85. 
Norse,  the  Old,  9,  37,  45,  46, 

83,  196,  198,  199,  201,  204. 
Northern  dialect  of  English,  86, 

1 17-122,  123-130,   133,  134, 

I37~I39.  168,  206. 
Northumbria,  kingdom  of,  23. 
Northumbrian  dialect,  the,  26, 

27.  3°.  31.  46,  95.  "5.  I2J. 

125,  128. 
Norwegian  tongue,  the,  9. 
Noun,  the,  29,  96,  163,  209-240. 
Number,    198,    209,    242,  401. 

See  Singular  Dual,  Plural. 

Objective  case,  267,  268. 

Ohthere,  33. 

Old    English    period,   the,   87- 

105,  206. 
Old  Saxon  tongue,  the,  10,  196. 
Ordericus  Vitalis  (1075-1144), 

54- 


Ormulum,  the,  88,  103. 
Orthography,     English,      180- 
182. 

Participle,  past,  of  the  strong 
conjugation,  387-400 ;  with 
prefix  ge,  y,  or  i,  387-390 ; 
dropping  or  retention  of  final 
-en,  389-393;  intrusion  of 
preterite  into  past  participle, 
393-398;  weak  verbs  assum- 
ing strong  past  participial 
forms,  397-399. 

Participle,  past,  of  the  weak 
conjugation,  400,  401 ;  drop- 
ping of  final  -it,  401. 

Participle,  present,  446;  partici- 
ples, compound  present  and 
past,  447. 

Pecock,  Reginald  (1390?- 
1460?),  quoted,  445. 

Peele,  George  (i553?-i 598?), 
quoted,  291,  455,  471. 

Pepys,  Samuel  (1632- 1 703), 
quoted,  299,  337. 

Persian  language,  the,  4. 

Personal  endings,  assumed  ori- 
gin of,  401-403;  disappear- 
ance of,  403. 

Personal  pronouns,  the,  97,  150, 
164,  263-289;  confusion  of 
nominative  and  objective, 
cases  of,  271-275. 

Persons,  401-404;  first  person 
singular,  408;  second  per- 
son singular,  408;  third  per- 
son singular,  407,  409,  410; 
persons  of  the  plural,  406, 
407,  410-414. 

Piatt  Deutsch,  the,  10. 

Plural  of  the  noun,  96,  146, 
148-150,  152,  215,  216,  220- 
226,  229-240. 

Polish  tongue,  the,  4. 


486         Index  to  Subjects  and  Persons. 


Pope,  Alexander  (1688-1744), 
282,  426,  429;   quoted,  439. 

Porter,  Thomas  (about  1670); 
quoted,  337,  45  '• 

Portuguese  language,  the,  6. 

Possessive  adjective  pronouns, 
275-277. 

Prefixes,  107,  108,  112,  113. 

Pronoun,  the,  256-300.  See 
Demonstrative,  Indefinite, 
Interrogative,  Personal,  Re- 
flexive, ami  Relative. 

Pronouns  of  address,  2S6-289. 

Provencal  tongue,  the,  6,  7. 

Purvey's  Recension  of  the  W'y- 
cliltite  Translation  of  the 
Bible,  70. 

Raleigh,  Sir  Walter  (1552- 
161 8),  287,  288. 

Reflexive  pronouns,  283-286. 

Relative  pronouns,  293-299. 

Reuter,  Fritz  (1810-1874),  11. 

Rhaeto-Romanic  tongue,  the,  7. 

Rhotacism,  201. 

Richard  I.  (r.  1189-1199),  54. 

Riche,  Barnabe,  quoted,  282. 

Robert  of  Gloucester,  60,90; 
quoted,  60,  259. 

Robert  Manning  of  Brunne 
(about  1320),  90. 

Rollo,  Duke  of  Normandy,  49. 

Romaic  language,  the,  4. 

Roman  *  onqui  si  ol  Britain,  18. 

Romanic  or  Romance  Lan- 
guages, 6. 

Roumanian  tongue,  the,  7. 

Runes,  34. 

Russian  language,  the,  4. 

Sackville,  Thomas,  Earl  of 
I  Dorset  (1536   1608  i,  quoted, 

331,456,46s. 
Sanscrit  language, the,  3, 9, 195. 


Saxon  Frontier,  Count  of  the, 
21. 

Saxon  (or  English)  tongue,  II, 
27. 

Saxon,  the  Old,  10,  196. 

Saxons,   the,  II,  22-24,  27- 

Scandinavian  branch  of  the 
Teutonic,  9. 

Scandinavian  element  in  Eng- 
lish, 43-47,  127,  128. 

Scotch  dialect   of    English,  the, 

133-139.  206- 
Scythian  family,  the,  12. 

Semitic  family  of  languages, 
the,  n,  12. 

Shakspeare,  William  (1564- 
1616),  167-169,  253,  354, 
381,  384,  433;  quoted,  166, 
274,  286,  287,  289,  377,  409, 
413.    443.    45  'i    45°'    4<"'5. 

475- 
Slavonic  or  Slavo-1  ,ettic  branch 

of  Indo-European,  4,  7. 
Southern    dialei  I    of    English, 

86,  118,  122,  123-130,   168, 

206. 
Spanish  language,  the,  6,  175. 
Spenser,      Edmund      ('553?- 

I.S99).    364.    4'2;     quoted, 

320,  322,  468. 
Steele,     Sir      Richard      (1671- 

1729);   quoted,  297. 
Subjunctive    mode,    the,     16S, 

171,  3°3.  415.  44'- 
s,  107,  108,  1 1  5. 
Superlatives   used    of    two    in 

comparison,  252. 
Sussex,  kingdom  of,  22. 
Synonymous  words  in  English, 

1 12. 

Swedish  tongue,  the,  9. 

Sweyn,  44. 

Swinburne,    Algernon    Charles 

I  I843-),  quoted,  252. 


Index  to  Subjects  and  Persons.         487 


Tartaric  family  of  languages,  1 2. 

Tennyson,  Alfred  (1809-1892), 
426,  429. 

Tense,  404;  the  present,  303, 
404-416;  contracted  present 
forms,  414;  the  preterite, 
J45>  3°3-  4i6;  preterite  of 
weak  conjugation,  416-418; 
preterite  of  the  strong  con- 
jugation, 418-433;  double 
forms  of  the  preterite  in 
.Modern  English,  420-428; 
the  perfect,  99,434;  the  plu- 
perfect, 434;  the  future,  99, 
432;   the  future-perfect,  433. 

"Testament  of  Love,  The,"  75. 

Teutonic  branch  of  Indo-Euro- 
pean, 8-1 1,  12,  194-205. 

Teutonic  Conquest  of  Britain, 
20. 

Thomson,  James  ( 1 700-1748), 
412. 

Trevisa,  John  of,  61;  quoted, 
63,  66,  118. 

Turanian    family  of  languages, 

12. 

Turkish  language,  the,  12. 

Udall,  Nicholas  (1506-1564), 
comedy  of  "Ralph  Roister 
I  )iistcs,"  quoted,  464. 

I'llilas,  9. 

Verb,  the,  98,    151,  153,    155, 

167-174,  301  II. 
Verbs,  irregular,  466-476. 
Verbs,    preterite-present,    452- 

466. 
Verb,  the   strong,   98,    153-155, 

303-355;  Class  I.,  313-319. 
35';  <  lass  II.,  319^323; 
(lass  III.,  323-331,  351; 
Class  IV.,  331-332,  351; 
Class  V.,  334-339, 351;  Class 


V 1  -.339-344, 35 1 ;  Class  VII., 
344-348. 

Veil  is,  strong,  losses  of,  in 
English,  349;  number  of, 
in  English,  349,  351;  ex- 
hibiting weak  forms,  350,  352. 

Verb,  the  substantive,  469- 
476. 

Verb,  the  weak,  99,  153-155, 
303-312,  349-386.. 

Verbs,  irregular  weak,  361- 
386;  with  preterite  termina- 
tions -ed  ox  -t,  362-367,  372- 
375;  with  same  forms 
throughout,  367-372;  with 
shortened  stem-vowel,  375— 
382;  with  original  vowel 
variation,  382-385;  with  or- 
thographic variations,  386. 

Vercelli  B<  10k,  the,  32. 

Vocabulary  of  English,  101- 
114,  142,  144,  162-164,  175- 
180. 

Voice,    the    active,    302;     the 
middle,     303;      the     passive, 
r  169-173,  303,448-452. 

\  owel-change  (jiblant),  202. 

Vowel-modification  {umlaut), 
203-205. 

Vowel-variation,  202. 

Wales,  North,  25,  117. 

Wales,  West,  25. 

Wallis,  |olm  ( 1616-1703),  381, 

3°3- 
Waller   de    Biblesworth    (about 

1270),  56. 
Webster,    John,     167;     quoted, 

274.  377- 
Wedmore,  Peace  of,  44. 

Welsh   tongue,   the,   5,    18,    19, 

24. 
Wessex,    kingdom    of,    22,   25, 

44- 


488  Index  to  Subjects  and  Persons. 


West  Germanic  division  of  the 

Teutonic,  8,  9. 
West  Midland  dialect,  the,  122, 

I3I-133. 

West-Saxon  dialect,  the,  26,  27, 
30,  31,  46,  83,  93,  1 1 5-1 1 7, 
122,  128,  208. 

William  I.,  the  Conqueror  (r. 
1066-1087),  50,  54. 

William  of  Malmesbury  (1095?- 

"43?)>  "7- 
Wycherley,      William      (1640- 

1715),  quoted,  275. 


Wycliffe%  John  (1324 7-1384), 
70;  Wycliffite  version  of  the 
Scriptures,  ^y,  quoted,  280, 
292,  473;  revised  by  Purvev, 
70. 

Wyntoun,  Andrew  (about  1420), 
I3S»  !36. 

y-,  as  a  prefix  to  the  participle, 
387-3yo- 

Zend,  the,  4. 


INDEX   TO  WORDS   AND    PHRASES. 


ABBREVIATIONS. 


a. 

=  adjective. 

pers. 

= 

personal. 

adv. 

=  adverb. 

phr. 

= 

phrase. 

af 

=  affix. 

pi. 

= 

plural. 

art. 

=  article. 

pp. 

= 

past  participle. 

comp. 

=  comparative  degree. 

p.  pres. 

= 

present  participle. 

defec. 

=  defective. 

poss. 

= 

possessive. 

demon. 

=  demonstrative. 

/»■■ 

= 

pronoun. 

end. 

=  ending. 

pref 

= 

prefix. 

gen. 

=  genitive. 

prep. 

= 

preposition. 

ger. 

=  gerund. 

pres. 

= 

present. 

imp. 

=  imperative. 

sing. 

= 

singular. 

imper. 

=  impersonal. 

superl. 

= 

superlative. 

ind. 

=  indicative. 

V. 

= 

verb. 

indef. 

=  indefinite. 

v.-phr. 

= 

verb-phrase. 

inf. 

=  infinitive. 

v.pret.pres 

= 

preterite-present 

inter j. 

=  interjection. 

verb. 

interrog 

=  interrogative. 

vs. 

= 

strong  verb. 

irreg. 

=  irregular. 

vw. 

= 

weak  verb. 

n. 

=  noun. 

vs.  vw. 

= 

verb,    strong   and 

neg. 

=  negative. 

weak. 

num. 

=  numeral. 

vs(viv). 

= 

verb   now  strong, 

P- 

=  participle. 

originally  weak. 

pass. 

=  passive. 

vw(vs). 

= 

verb    now    weak, 

per. 

=  person. 

originally  strong. 

Foreign  words  and  Anglo-Saxon  words  are  printed  in  Italics. 
The  Anglo-Saxon  originals,  when  not  given,  can  be  found  under 
the  Modern  English  words  derived  from  them. 

489 


49Q 


Index  to    Words  and  PJirascs. 


a,  pr.  pers.,  269. 

a,  prep.,  172. 

abide,  vs.  vw.,  313,  315,  350, 

394;     abode (n),    //.,    315; 

abidden,  abid,//.,  315,  394. 
-able,  suf.,  113. 
ache,  vw{vs) .,  343. 
anig.  a.,  204. 

agan,  v.  pret.  pres.,  453,  454. 
aged,  a.,  360. 
ago,  agone,  a.,  469. 
-al,  suf.,  113. 
aller,    alther,    'of  all,'   a.   gen. 

pi.,  277. 
an,  art.  indef.,  299,  300. 
an,  num.,  204. 
an,  pr.  indef.,  204,  299. 
-an,  n.  pi.  end.,  148,  212. 
-an,  inf.  end.,  94,  442. 
-and(e),  end.  p.  pres.,  446,  447. 
anti-,  pre/.,  1 12. 
any,  a.,  204. 
apparatus,  ».,  238. 
arc,  pres.pl.,  46,  168,470. 
assen,  «.  />/.,  223. 
asshen,  ;/.  />/.,  223. 
avon,  n.,  39. 
awake,  vs.  vw.,  341. 
awake,  a.,  341. 

bad,  a.,  253;   baddcr,  baddest, 

253- 
bake,    vw(vs).,     343;     bakcn, 

PP>  344- 
ban,  7T('(r'.f).,  346. 
band,  ;/.,  202. 
bard,  n.,  39. 
bare,/>;v/.,  332. 
bark,  vw{vs).,  331. 
be,  .-'.  irreg.,46,  167,  168,  172, 

173.  434.  435-  449.  45°>  4^9- 
476;  ben,  T,d pc- is.  sing.,  471 ; 
be,  //.,  474;  there  be,  phr., 
471. 


bear,  vs.,  332,  391,   399,   430 ; 

beared,    prct.,    352;      bare, 

pret.,  332. 
beat,  vs.,  345,  390,  393. 
become,  vs.,  449,  450. 
bede(n),    'to    offer,'   vs.,   321, 

338.    ' 
bee,  n.,  148,  223,  224. 
beef,  71.,  in. 
been,  n.pl.,  148,  223. 
begen,  num.,  265. 
begin,  vs.,  202,  391,   395,  396, 

424,   425,  436;    began,  //., 

396;    begunnen, //.,  391. 
behave,  vw.,  385 ;  behad,  pret., 

386. 
being  built,  the  house  is,  phr.; 

being    reaped,    the   field    is, 

phr.,  451. 
bell,  '  to  roar,'  vw(vs).,  330. 
ben,  n.,  39. 
bend,  771'.,  366. 
beon,   v.   irreg.,    170,   449,  450, 

469,  474. 
beorg,  n.,  42. 
bequeathe,  V7c(vs).,  339. 
bereave,    vw.,    379,    381;     be- 

reaven,  //.,  398,  399. 
beseech,   vw.,    127,    385;     be- 

seeched,  pret.,  385. 
bestead,  vw.,  371. 
bet,  vw.,  372,  373. 
betide,  vw.,  376,  378;  betided, 

pret.,  378. 
between  you  and  f,  phr.,  165. 
bid,    vs.,   335,   337,   393,   425, 

444;    bid,    //.,    337;     bade, 
./A.  337;  bit,  '1)1,15,'  414. 
bidde(n),    'to    ask,'   vs.,    321, 

337- 
bide,  vw.  vs.,  313,  314,  315,  342, 

394;    bid,  pret.,  314. 
bind,  vs.,    324,  326,  427,  442; 

bounden,  pp.,  330,  390. 


Index  to    Words  and  Phrases. 


491 


biscop,    n.,  42;     biscop-rice,    n., 

42. 
bishop,    «.,  42;    bishopric,    ;/., 

42. 
bite,  vs.,  313,   392;   bot,  bote, 

pret.,  314. 
black,  a.;  v.  ;  11.,  1 1 3. 
bleed,  wy.,  376. 
blend,  vw.,  366. 
bless,  otc,  364. 
blind,  a.,  243-246,  249. 
blow  (of  wind,  etc.),  vs.,  345, 

392;   blowed,  pret.,  354. 

blow,  'to  bloom,'  vs.,  345,  392. 

bbchus,  n.,  109. 

bond,  ».,  202. 

born    1    ., 
borne}  ^'399. 

bot(e),/;v/.,  314. 

boughten,  //.,  398. 

bound,  a.,  128. 

bounden,  a.,  330,  390. 

bow,  vw{vs).,  322. 

brace,  «.,  231. 

braid,  vw(vs).,  331. 

break,  w.,  332,  333,  393,  429, 

430;   brake,  pret.,  332,  430; 

broke,  pp.,  m,  429. 
breeches,  ;/.,  232. 
breed,  vw.,  376. 
brethren,  11.  pi.,  129,  149,  234, 

235- 
brew,  vw(vs).,  322. 
bring,  vw.,  306,  382. 
broad,  a.,  249. 
&r<?<r,  n.,  232. 
brogue,  n.,  39. 
brook,  V7u(vs).,  322. 
brtiftor,  n.,  129,  149,  220,  234. 
brother,  ;/.,   129,  149,  150,  200, 

220,  234,  235. 
bu,  num.,  265. 
build,  vw.,  366. 
burn,  vw(vs).,  330,331. 


burst,     v<o(vs).,      331,      370; 
bursted,  pret.,  370;   bursten, 

PP-,  33i,  397- 
bushel,  71.,  231. 

'  busted,'  pret.  and  pp.,  370. 

buy,  vw.,  382. 

-by,  n.,  45. 

/yv,  n.,  45. 

caer,  n.,  40. 

calf,  n.,  ill,  235;  calveren,//., 

235- 
call,  vw.,  47. 
can,  w.  auxil.,  45S. 
can,  v.  pret.  pres.,  457,  458. 
care,  «.,  210,  213,  218,  227. 
earn,  n.,  95,  2IO,  213,  218,  219. 
carve,  vw{vs).,  309,  331 ;    carf, 

/;-£•/.,  309;    carven,  //.,  331, 

397- 
cas, '  cases,'  n.  pi.,  231. 

cast.zw.,  371,  372,  398;  casted, 

pret.,yj2;   casten,//.,  398. 
-caster,  «//,  20. 
catch,  zw.,  155,  383;    catched, 

/«/.,  155,  385. 
-cester,  sup.,  20. 

cherub,  cherubim,  «.,  239,  240. 
chese(n),'to  choose,'  vs.,  321. 
-Chester,  jz</C,  20. 
chew,  vw(vs).,  322. 
chidden,//.,  316,  317,  398. 
chide,  vs(yw).,  316,   317,  351, 

377.393;    chided,  pret.,  7,17; 

chode,  pret.,  317. 
chief,  a.,  252. 
child,    71.,    129,    149,    152,    235, 

236;    childer, //.,  236. 
chode,  pret.,  317. 
choose,  vs.,  319,  320,  321,  392, 

429;  choosed,  pret.,  352,  354. 
church,  ;/ ,  127. 
cild,  n.,  129,  149,  235. 
dree,  n.,  127. 


492 


Index  to    Words  and  Phrases. 


claymore,  n.,  39. 
clave,  pret.,  313,  316. 

claw,  vw{vs).,  346. 

cleave,  'to  split,'  vw.  vs.,  319, 
321,  350,  380,  381,  392; 
clove,  pret.,  319;  cleaved, 
cleft,  pret.,  321,  380;  clave, 
pret.,  316,  321. 

cleave,  '  to  adhere,'  vw.  vs., 
313,  315,  316,  321,  350,  351, 
396;    clave,/r*/.,  321. 

clepe,  vw.,  47,  389. 

climb,  vw.  vs.,  155,  324,  326, 
328,  35°-  354.  424;  climb, 
pret.,  424;   clomb,  pret.,  424. 

cling,  vs.,  324,  427. 

clomb,  pret.,  324,  328,  424. 


clothe,  vw 


;86. 


-coin,  snj.,  20. 

come,  vs.,  332,  ^3,  391,  442; 

corned,  pret.,  352;    com(e), 

A"^->  333;    comen,  pp.,  m, 

391 ;    comand,  p.  pres.,  447. 
con,  zw.,  458. 
conne(n),  'to  be  able,'  v.  pret. 

pres.,  458. 
consummate,  pp.,  401. 
coren,  pp.,  320. 
cost,  vw.,  371. 
coud  or  couth,  //.,  458. 
coude  orcouthe,  pret.,4$j,  458. 
could,  pret.,  201,  457,  458. 
couple,  ;/.,  231. 
cousin-german,  //.,  105. 
cow.  149,  200,  232,  236. 
create,//.,  401. 
creep,      vw(vs).,      322,     380; 

crope,    pret.,    322;     cropen, 

PP;  32  2. 
crope,  pret.;  cropen,  //.,  322. 
1  row,  vs.  vw.,  345,  350,  396; 

crown,//.,  345,  396. 
crowd,  vw{  vs).,  322. 
cu,  n.,  232,  236. 


cunnan,  v.  pret.  pres.,  457. 

curse,  z/7w.,  364. 

cut,  vw.,  371,  372,  398;   cutted, 

pret.,  372;    cutten,//.,  398. 
cwetSan,  vs.,  338. 

O"^.  n->  215. 

-d,  /;v/.  ^«</.     See  -i?</  and  -de. 
-d,  //.  <•«</.,  356,  365,  387,  400, 

401. 
dare,   v.   pret.   pres.   and    vw., 

AAA,  459.  463;  dare,  Pres- 
3d  sing.,  459;  dares,  pres. 
3d  sing.,  459;  dared,  pret., 
459;  durst,  pret.,  459;  durst, 

PP;  459- 
daughter,  ;/.,  149, 152,  220,  235. 
dauntless,  a.,  109. 
-d(e),   pret.    end.,    153,    356- 

366,  375- 
deal,  vw.,  378. 
deem,  vw.,  357,  358,  362,  404, 

405,  416,  417,  418,440. 
deer,  ;;.,  152,  224,  230. 
delve,  vw(vs).,  330. 
derre,  '  dearer,'  a.  eomp.,  254. 
dig,    vs(vw).,    155,    327,    351, 

3545    digged,  327,  354. 
dight,  vw.,  386. 
ding,  7w(7'5).,  328,  329;  dung, 

pret.  and  //.,  329. 
dip,  vw.,  364. 
dis-,  pre/.,  1 1 2. 
distraught,  a.,  3S4. 
dive,  V7u{vs).,  323,  355;    clove, 

pret.,  323. 
do,  7;.   irreg.   and    auxil.,    99, 

I56>  305.  356>  436-440,  45'. 
466;  doth,  pres.  pi.,  414, 
466. 

dogma,  ;;.,  147,  237;  dog- 
mata, ;/.  //.,  147,  237. 

-limn,  snf.,  10S. 

doughtren,  11.  pi,  149,  152,234. 


Index  to    Words  and  Phrases. 


493 


dove,  pre/.,  323. 

down,  n.,  42. 

dozen,  n.,  231. 

drag,  vw(vs).,  343. 

drave,  preL,  431. 

draw,  vs.,  340,  341,  342,  343, 

392;   droh,  <\xo\\,pret.,  341 ; 

drawed,  pret.,  146,  352. 
dread,  wv(vs).,  346,  360,  367; 

dredde,   pret.,    367;     dread, 

/>'<?/.,  381; 

dream,  ;;.,  47. 

dream,  zw.,  378,  381. 

dree,  'to  suffer,'  vw(vs)., 
322. 

drink,  ot.,  153,  324,  394,  423, 
424,425,426;  drinked,  pret., 
146;  drank,  //>.,  394;  drunk- 
en, pp.,  33°.  390. 

drive,  vs.,  99,  202,  306,  313,  314, 
391,  418,  420,  431;  drave, 
pret.,  431;  driv,  pret.,  314; 
drove,//.,  395. 

druid,  n.,  39. 

drunken,  pp.,  330,  390. 

dun,  n.,  42. 

dung,  pret.  and  //>.,  329. 

durran,  v.  pret.  pres.,  459. 

durst,  pret.,  459. 

dwell,  fit'.,  366. 

-e,  a.  pi.  end.,  151. 

-e,  n.  pi.  end.,  150,  215,  224. 

-e,  v.  end.,  119,  151,  152,  153, 

417,  418,  419,  420,  421,  443, 

444. 
eage,  n.,  211,  212. 
ear,  'to  plough,'  m,  175,  357, 

404,405,  417,  418,  440. 
eat,  vs.,  335,  339,  393,  395, 425 ; 

eat,  pp.,  337. 
-ed,  suf.,  108. 
-(e)d,  pret.  end.,  126,  145,  146, 

153.  359-361,  366,  3«7- 


-ede,  pret.  end.,  357-359,  363> 

375- 
-ede,  suf.,  108. 

effluvia,  n.  pi.,  239. 

egg,  n.,   160,  235;    eyren,  //., 

160,  235. 
eghen,  'eyes,'  n.  pi.,  130. 
elder,  eldest,  a.  comp.  and  su- 
per I. ,  151,  248,  249,  250. 
ellipsis,  ;/.,  237. 
'em,  pr.  pers.,  150,  267. 
-en,  n.  pi.  end.,  129,  130,  148, 

222,  223. 
-en,    inf.    end.,   94,    151,    442- 

444. 
-en,  v.  end.,  119,  151,  152,  174, 

405,406,  410-413,415,  417, 

418,  420,  421. 
-en,  pp.   end.,   356,   387,   389- 

400. 
end,  «.,  210,  213,  227. 
-ende,  p.  pres.  end.,  445,  446. 
ende,  n.,  210,  213,  220. 
-en(n)e,£W.  end.,  443, 444, 446. 
enough,  a.,  387. 
eode,  pret.,  467,  468. 
-er,  suf.,  108. 

-er  "1    comp.    and    superl.    suf, 
-est]        249-251. 
-ere,  suf.,  108. 
errata,  n.  pi.,  239. 
-(e)s,  gen.  end.,  126,  282. 
-(e)s,  //.  end.  of  n.,  129,  130, 

146,  148-150,  220,  223,  227. 
-(e)s,  2d  per.  pres.  sing,  end., 

124,  406,  408,  409. 
-(e)s,  3d  per.  sing.  pres.  end., 

119,  124,  126,  169,  406,  407, 

409,  410. 
-(e)s,    pres.    plur.    end.,    128, 

148-150,  174,  406,  411,  413. 
esk,  n.,  39. 
-{e)st,  end.  2d  per.  v.,  405,  406, 

408,  409,  419,  420. 


494 


Index  to    Words  and  Phrases. 


-(e)th,    end.    of  3d  per.  pres. 

sing.,  168,  169,405,  406,  407, 

409,  410,  415. 
-(e)th,  pres.  plur.   end.,    119, 

124,  128,  174,  405,  406,  407, 

4 1 1 , 4 1 4, 4 1 5 ;  //.  imper. ,  440. 
evil,  a.,  253. 

excellentest,  a.,  super/.,  251. 
exquisitest,  a.,  super!.,  251. 
eye,  ;/.,  211,  212.  214,  227. 
eyen,  or  eyne,  n.pl.,  148,  223, 

233- 
eyren,  'eggs,'  n.pl.,  160,  235. 

fader,  n.,  220. 

fall,  vs.,  345,  392. 

falsehood,  n.,  109. 

fanatical,  a.,  105. 

fare,  vw(vs).,  343. 

farther,  farthest,  a.,  comp.  and 

super/.,  254. 
father,  ;/.,  200,  220. 
fathom,  ;/.,  231. 
feed,  vw.,  376. 
feel,  via.,  379,  444. 
fefor,  n.,  42. 

fele,  'many,'/;',  iiulef.,  299. 
/*w,  '  far,'  adv.,  254. 
ferre,  '  farther,'  a.  comp.,  254. 
ferrest,  «.  super/.,  254. 
fiend,  //.,  200. 
fight,     vs.,     325,     330,     427; 

foughten,^/.,  330,  390, 

Wl,   ■'■•'■.    153.    357.   35s-   36l> 
362. 

find,  r ..,  324,  326. 

fish,  ;/.,  199. 

fix,  77i'.,  364. 

fixen,  ;/.,  127. 

flang,  pre/..  326,  424. 

(lay,   vw(vs).,  343,  341;    llain, 

PP;   344-1 

flea,  //.,  223. 

flee,  7-rr.,  321,  322,  380. 


fleen,  n.  pi.,  223. 

fleet,  vwlvs').,  322. 

fling,  vs.,  326,  351,  39i,424- 

flite,  'to  scold,'  vw(vs).,  318. 

float,  vw(vs~).,  322. 

flon,  ;/.  //.,  223. 

flow,  vw{vs~).,  107,  346;  flown, 

/A.  347- 
flungen,  //.,  391. 
fly,  vs.,  319,  321,  391. 
foe,  n. ,  235;    fon,//.,  235. 
fold,  <yzc(OT).,  346. 
folk,  ;/.,  224,  225,  230. 
followand,  /.  pres.,  447. 
foot,   n.,    146,    152,    204,    205, 

230,    232;     foots,    //.,    146, 

233- 

forbid,  vs.,  338. 

fore,  adv.,  254. 

foremost,  a.,  254. 

forget,  vs.,  337;  forgotten,  for- 
got, //.,  337- 

forlorn,  </.,  201,  320. 

formula,  ;/.,  147,  237. 

forsake,  vs.,  340,  342,  392,418, 
419,  420,  421  ;   forsook,  //., 

341.  395-  396. 
fortnight,  ;/.,  200. 
foughten,  pp.,  330,  390. 
fox,  //.,  127. 
fraught,  vw.,  386. 
freeze,   vs.,  319,  392;   freezed, 

pre/.,  354;    froren,  frore,//., 

320;    froze,//.,  429. 

freight,  vw.,  386. 

fret,  ;w(i'j)-,  339;    frettcn,//., 

.339- 
friend,  ;/.,  200. 

Ir<>,  adv.,  128. 

froren,  frore,  //.,  320. 

-fui,  sit/:,  10S. 

-full,  suf.,  108. 

further,  furthest,  a.,  comp.  and 
super/.,  254. 


Index  to    Words  and  Phrases. 


495 


gan,  v.  irreg.,  467-469. 

gan,  pret.,  422,  423. 

gar,  v w.,  128. 

ge-,pre/.,  387,  456. 

geld,  vw.,  366. 

genius,  n.,  238. 

genus,  «.,  147,  237. 

get,    vs.,    306,    335,   393,  431; 

gat,/;v/.,  335,  336,  431. 
gewiss,  a.,  456. 
gild,  viu.,  366. 
gin,  vs.,  324,  342, 436 ;  gan,  436, 

.438- 

gin,  v.  auxil.  ;  gan,  pret.  sing., 
422;  gunne(n),  gonne(n), 
pret.  pi,  423,  437-  433- 

gird,  vw.,  365,  366. 

give,  vs.,  335,  337,  391. 

glide  vw(vs).,   154,   309,  318; 
glod,/>-<tf.,  309 ;   glit, '  glides,' 

415- 
glitterand,  p.  pres.,  447. 
glow,  vw(vs).,  346. 
gnaw,     vw(vs).,      343,      344; 

gnawn,//.,  344,  397. 
go,  v.  irreg.,  366,  447,467-469; 

geth,  3d  per.  pres.  sing.,  467, 

469 ;  go,  />/>.,  469. 
gonne(n).  See  gin. 
good,  0.,  253;  gooder,  goodest, 

253- 

goose,  n.,  152,  232,  233. 

got,  I  have,  phr.,  452. 

gotten,  got,  pp.,  306,  335,  337, 

393- 
grave,  vw{vs).,  343,  344,  397; 

graven,//.,  344,  397. 
greet,   vw.,    362,    367;     grette, 

pret.,  367. 
greet,     'to     mourn,'     vw(vs)., 

347- 
grind,  vs.,  324,  326,  427. 
gripe,  vw(vs).,  318. 
gross,  n.,  231. 


grow,  vs.,  345,  392,  419,  420, 
421;   growed, //-<>/.,  309,310. 
gunne(n).     See  gin. 

ha.,  pr.  pers.,  269. 

-had,  suf.,  108. 

had  as  lief,  7'. -phr.,  444. 

had  better,    7'. -phr.,   444;    had 

liefer, v.-phr., 444;  hadrather, 

v.-phr.,    444;     had    sooner, 

v.-phr.,  444. 
Had  I  wist,  phr.,  456. 
'had  ought,'  v.-phr.,  454. 
ham(e),  ;;.,  119. 
hang,  ot.  m,  345,  346,   350; 

heng,  /;W.,  34O;  hong,  pret., 

346- 
hard,  <*.,  249. 
hatan,    vs.,     203,    348;     //<7//V, 

pass.,  449. 
have,   7W.,  306,  385,  434,  435; 

hath  and  has,  jd  sing,  pres., 

410;    hath,  pres.  pi.,  414. 
haved(e),  pret.,  385. 
he,  pr.  pers.,  98,  164,  264,  265, 

266,  269,  270. 
he,  it  is,  phr.,  275. 
hear,  vw.,  357,  379. 
heat,  vw.,  377;    heat,//.,  377. 
heave,   vw.  vs.,  340,  342,  350, 

351;    hove(n),//.,  342. 
heed,  iw.,  356. 
help,  m  OT.,  146,  155,  156,  325, 

328,    330,     350,    351,    354; 

holp,  pret.,   325;    holp(en), 

//■»  325.  330,  390. 

hem,  '  them,'  pr.  pers.,  98,  150, 
266,  267,  270. 

hemself,  '  themselves,'  pr.  re- 
flex., 285. 

heng,  pret.,  346. 

/■<v,  pr.  pers.,  264,  266. 

her,  pr.  pers.,  164,  264,  267,273, 
282;    it  is  her,  phr.,  165,  273. 


496 


Index  to    Words  and  Phrases. 


here,  keres,  '  their,'  pr.  pers., 
98,  150,  266,  270,  278,  279, 
280. 

heren,  '  tbeir'n,'  pr.  pers.,  280. 

her'n,  '  hers,'  pr.  pers.,  280. 

herre,  'higher,'  a.  co/iip.,  254. 

herself,/;-,  reflex.,  285. 

hew,  vw(vs).,  346,  347,  397; 
hew,  pret.,   347;    hewn,  //>., 

347>  397- 
hext,  '  highest,'  a.  super/.,  254. 
hi,   'they,'  pr.  pers.,   98,    150, 

264,  266. 
hidden,  pp.,  316,  317,  393,  398. 
hide,    vs.    m,    316,   317,   351, 

377.  393.  398. 
high,  a.,  254. 
hight,  vw{vs).,  346,  347,  348, 

37°- 
him,  pr.  pers.,    98,    164,    264, 

266,  267,  268,  270,  273;    it  is 

him,  phr.,  165,  273. 
himself,  himselven,  pr.  re/lex., 

_ 283-285. 
hindmost,  a.,  254. 
hires,  'hers,' pr.pers.,  278. 
his,  /;-.   nii!s<.   gen.,   264,  270, 

279,  2SI-2S.5. 

his,/;-,  neut. gen.,  94, 166,  167, 
173,  264,  270,  276,  279,  2S1- 
283. 

his'n,  pr.  pers.,  281. 

hisself,  pr.  re/lex.,  285. 

hit,  '  it.'  pr.  pers.,  9S,  166,  264, 
268,  269,  270. 

hit,  vw.,  371. 

hltefdige,  n.,  219. 

hold,    vs.,   203,    345;    holden, 

/A.  34".  392- 
holp,  /;v/.,  325. 

holpen,    holP»  /A.   325>    33°. 

390- 
honorablest,  </.  superl.,  251. 
■hood,  jm/C,  108,  I'm. 


//c;.f,  n.,  211,  216,  217,  224. 
horse,  «.,   150,   152,   211,   216, 

217,  224,  225,  227,  230. 
hosen,  ;/./>/.,  13°'  224- 
house,    ;/.,    224;     housen,  //., 

129,  149. 
house  to  let,  phr.,  445. 
how,  adv.,  293. 
hriSe,  n.,  42. 
hurt,  vw.,  371. 
hus,  n.,  149,  224. 
hwa,  '  who,'  /;-.  interrog.,   97, 

127,  198,  289,  290. 
hwa,  pr.  indef.,  299. 
hwcet,  pr.  interrog.,  289,  290. 
/i7i>ifber,-pr.  interrog.,  289,  292. 
hwil,  n.,  221. 

hwile,  pr.  interrog.,  289,  291. 
hypothesis,  «.,  237. 

X,  pr.  pers.,  164,  268,  270,  273. 

i;pref.,  387-391. 

7  il  aw,  or  it  am  /,  phr.,  275. 

/,  it  is,  phr.,  275. 

i-be,  pp.,  474. 

ic,  pr.  pers.,  263,  268. 

ice-berg,  ;/.,  42. 

ich, pr.pers.,  268. 

-ig,  suf.,  108,  204. 

ik,  pr.  pers.,  268. 

i-lent,  pp.,  388. 

ilk,  /r.  demon.,  262. 

ill,  a.,  128,  253. 

in,  pnp.,  172. 

-inde,  /.  pies,  end.,  446,  447. 

index,  //..  238. 

-ing,  verbal  n.  end.,   108,   172, 

447- 
-ing(e),/.  pres.  end.,  447. 

inmost,  </.,  2^5. 

inter-,  prej  ,112. 

is,  /J/  </;/</  2d  pers.,  120,  123. 

is,  /vv.r.  //.,  474,  475. 

is  being,  v.- phr.,  172,  173. 


Index  to    Words  and  Phrases. 


497 


is  being  built,  v.-phr.,  172,  173. 

is  building,  v.-phr.,  172,  173. 

-isc,  suf.,  10S. 

Ise,  '  I  shall,'  v.-phr.,  460. 

-ish,  suf.,  108. 

-ism,  suf.  ,113. 

-ist,  suf.,  113. 

i-sworn,  pp.,  388. 

it,  pr.  pers.,  98,  165,  174,  266, 

267,  268,   269,   270,   271;    it 

own,  166. 
it  is  he,  phr.,  275. 
it  is  her,  phr.,  165,  273. 
it  is  him,  phr.,  165,  273. 
it  is  me,  phr.,  165,  273. 
it  is  you,  phr.,  165. 
its,  pr.pers.,  94,  165-167,  270, 

271. 
itself,  pr.  reflex.,  285. 
iwis, '  certainly,'  adv.,  ^6,  457; 

Iwis  or  I  wis,  457. 
-ize,  suf,  1 13. 

keep,  vw.,  362,  363,  379,  381. 
kine,  n.  pi.,  149,  232,  235,  236. 
king,  n.,  215,  222;    kingen,//., 

215. 
kirk,  ;;.,  127. 
kiss,  vw.,  362,  363. 
knead,  vw(vs~).,  339. 
kneel,  via.,  380,  381. 
knit,  vw.,  372. 
know,     vs.,     342,     345,     392; 

knowed,    146. 
kye,  n.  pi.,  200,  232,  235. 

lade,  vw(vs).,  343,  344,  3975 

laden,  pp.,  344,  397- 
lady,  11.,  219;   lady,£v?«.,  219. 
lamb,  11. ;  //.,  lamhren,  235. 
Ian,  n.,  40. 
laugh,  vw(vs).,  343. 
lay,  vw.,  336. 
lead,  vw.,  376. 


lean,  vw.,  379,  381. 

leap,  vw(vs).,  346,  380,  381. 

learn,  vw.,  364,  366. 

learned,  «.,  360. 

-leas,  suf.,  108. 

leasing,  n.,  175. 

leave,  z>ze>.,  379. 

lend,  vw.,  344,  366. 

lene(n),  '  to  lend,'  vw.,  344. 

lenger^  a.  com  p.,  151,  248,  250. 

lese(n),  'to  lose,'  vs.,  320,  321, 

322. 
less,  a.  comp.,  253;   lesser,  253. 
dess,  suf,  108,  109. 
let,  vw(vs).,  346,  370,  440,  444. 
-lie,  suf.,  108. 
lie,  vs.,  335,  336,  337,  391,  400; 

lien,  pp.,  400. 
lie,  'to  deceive,'  v?o(vs).,  322. 
lief,  liefer,  adv.,  444. 
lift,    vw.,    374;    lift,   pret.  and 

/A.   374- 
light,  '  to  illuminate,'  vw.,  377, 
378;    light,  'to  alight,'  vw., 

377,  378. 
dike,  suf,  108. 
lin,  n.,  39. 

list,   7'7C,  4I5 

\\\.,pret.  and//.,  377,  378. 
little,    a.,    253;     littler,    littlest, 

253- 
load, vw., 344;  loaden,//.,344. 

loan,  «.,  344. 

loan,  zw.,  344. 

long,  a.,   151,    248,    250.      See 

lenger,  comp. 
look,  vw.,  357,  358,  359,  361, 

363,  404,  405,  417,  418,  440. 
lorn,  a.,  201,  320. 
lose,  vw{vs).,  320, 321,322,380. 
louse,  71.,  232,    233. 
lout,  'to  bow,'  V7(.'(vs).,  322. 
low,  vw(vs)„  347. 
dy,  suf.,  108. 


498 


Index  to    Words  and  PJirascs. 


-ma,  suf.  superl.,  254. 

magan,  mugan,  v.  pret.  pres., 

461. 
make,  vw.,  385,  444;  maked(e), 

pret.,  385. 
man,    //.,    146,    152,    200,   202, 

204,    232,    233;     mans,    pi., 

146,   233. 
man,  pr.  ind.,  299. 
man,    niou,    'intend,'    v.    pret. 

pres.,  463,464;  111  nude,  pret., 

463- 
maun,  v.  pret.  pres.,  464. 
may,  v.  pret.  pres.,  461. 
me,  pr.  pers.,  97,  164,  267,  273; 

it  is  me,  phr.,  165,  273. 
me,  men,/;-,  indef.,  299. 
mean,  vw.,  379. 
meet,  vw.,  376. 
melt,  vw{vs).,  309,  330,    331; 

molt,  pret.,  309,  331 ;  molten, 

/Ai  331.  397- 
men,  me,  /;-.  indef.,  299. 

me  self,  /;-.  reflex.,  284. 

memorandum,  ;/.,  147,  238;  //., 
memorandums  or  memo- 
randa. 

-mest,  suf.  super!.,  254,  255. 

mete,  vw(ys)„  339. 

methinks,  vw.  imper.,  383. 

mew,  pret.,  347. 

midmost,  </.,  255. 

might,  pret.,  461,  462. 

mile,  «.,  231. 

min(e),  mi,  my,  pr.  pers.  and 
/055.-,  269,  275,  277,  278,  280. 

mistook,  pp.,  341,  396, 

mix,  vw.,  366. 

niodor,  n.,  220. 

molt,  pret.,    molten,   pp.,    309, 

331.  397- 
month,  ;/.,  200. 
more,  )       ,       , 

most,}adv-0fcomt->25°>251' 


mote(n),   v.   pret.    pres.,   462, 

463- 
mother,  n.,  220. 
mought,  pret.,  462. 
moun,  v.  pret.  pres.,  464. 
mourn,  vw{vs).,  331. 
mouse,  ;?.,  152,  204,  232,  233. 
mow,  vw(vs).,  347,397;    mew, 

pret.,  347;    mown,  //.,  347, 

397- 
mowe(n),  'to  be  able,'  v.  pret. 

pres.,  461. 
much,  a.,  253. 
mun,  v.  pret.  pres.,  464. 
in  nut,  n.,  42. 

must,  v.  pret.  pres.,  462,  463. 
my,  pr.     See  mine. 
myself,  mvselve(n),  pr.  reflex., 

284,  285,  286. 

-n,  end.,  95,405.  See  (f)«,420, 

442,  443- 
neah,  adv.,  254. 
neat,  n.,  230. 
need,  vw.,  444,  465;   need,  3d 

sing,   pres.,    466;    needs,  3d 

sing,  pres.,  466. 

nerre,  '  nearer,'  a.  comp.,  254. 

-Hi's,    1        r     ,„o 
suf.,  108. 

-ins,    J 

-ness,  suf.,  108. 

next,  '  nearest/  a.  super/.,  254. 

night,  //.,  152,  200. 

nill,  v.  reg.,  465. 

niste,  'knew  not,' pret.,  456. 

mm-,  pre/'.,  113. 

non,  no,  </.,  278. 

north  most,  a.,  255. 

not, '  know  not,'  pres.  tense,  456. 

oasis,  «.,  237. 
obliged,  to  be,  v.-p/ir.,  463. 
-ode,  //y/.  end.,  357,  358,  369. 
old,  a.,  151,  246,  248,  249,  250. 


Index  to    Words  and  PJirases. 


499 


olden,  a.,  246. 

omen,  ;/.,  147,  237;    omina, //., 

147.  237- 
on,  prep.,  172. 

onginnan,  vs.,  436,  437. 

ought,  v.  defec,  453,  454. 

our,  ours,  fr.  pers.,    276,  278, 

279,  280. 

our'n,  pr.  pers.,  280. 

ourself,/r.  reflex.,  284,  285, 286. 

owe,  vw-,  454. 

own,  a.,  454. 

ox,  «.,  in,  129,  130,  148,  152, 

211,   212,   213,  214,   2l8,  224, 

227,  233;  //.,  oxes,  233. 
oxa,  n.,  95,  211,  212,  218. 

pair,  «.,  231. 

pass,  vw.,  366. 

paven,  pp.,  398,  399. 

pay,  vw.,  386. 

pen,  n.,  39. 

pen,  vw.,  364. 

perfect,  more  and  most,  252. 

perfectior,     perfeclissimus,     a. 

comp.  <?«</ superl.,  252. 
persuade  myself,  I,  phr.,  449; 

persuaded,  I  am,  v. -phr.,  449. 
petroleum,  n.,  1 10. 
phenomenon,  «.,  238. 
pight,//.,  384. 

pitch,  »<<:<.,  384;   pight, //.,  384. 
plaid,  n.,  39. 
flante,  n.,  42. 
plantian,  vw.,  42. 
plead,    vw.,    377,    37S;    plead, 

fret.,  378. 
plight,  vw.,  374. 
/>#/,  n.,  40. 
pollute,//.,  401. 
pork,  n.,  III. 
pound,  ».,  230. 
prove,    zw.,  399;    proven,  //., 

399- 


put,  vw.,  371,  398;  putten,  //., 
398. 

quair,  n.,  136. 

quilk,/r.  inter rog.  and  tv/.,  291. 

quit,  vw.,  372,  373. 

quod,  fret.,  339. 

quoth,  /r^.,  339. 

quotha, '  indeed,'  interj.,  269. 

radius,  n.,  238. 

raught,  fret,  and  //.,  155,  384. 

reach,    vw.,     155,    383,     384; 

raught,  fret,  and//.,  155, 384. 
read,  vw.,  376. 
reave,  m,  379,  381. 
rede,  '  to  advise,'  vw{vs).,  347. 
reek,  vw(vs).,  322. 
reeve,  vs.  vw.,  340,  351. 
regol,  n.,  42. 
regollic,  a.,  42. 
rend,  ww.,  366. 
rid,  vw.,  369. 
ride,    w.,    313,  392,   395,  423, 

425;    rit,  'rides,'  414. 
ring,   vs(vw).,  326,    351,    391, 

425,  426,  429;    rungen,  //., 

391. 

rinne(n),    renne(n),   '  to   run,' 

vs.,  329. 

rise,  vs.,  309,  310,  313,  314, 
391;  ris,  fret.,  314;  rised, 
fret.,  309,  310;  rose,  //>., 
395>  396;   rist,  'riseth,'  415. 

rive,  vw\vs).,  318,  397;   riven, 

//-  3i8,  397- 
rock-oil,  ;?.,  1 10. 
root,  V7v(vs).,  347. 
ros,  n.,  40. 

rout,  '  to  snore,'  v%v{vs).,  322. 
row,  vw(vs).,  347. 
rue,  vw(vs).,  322. 
run,  vs.,    324,   329,   428;     run, 

fret.,  329,  428. 


5oo 


Index  to    Woi'ds  and  Phrases. 


-s,  n.  pi.  end.,  129,  150.     See 

(e)s. 
-S,    tense  end.,  407,    408,   409. 

See  (e)s. 
sail,  71.,  231. 
sain,  pp.,  398,  399. 
-sake,  vs.,  340,  342. 
sal,  'shall,'  v. pret. pres.,  119. 
sang,  'song,'  n.,  119. 
saw,  vw.,  353,  397;   sawn,  //>., 

353- 
say,  vw.,  386,  398;    sain,  //., 

398,  399- 
scathe  vta^vs).,  343. 
sap,  n.,  211,  213. 
-scipe,  suf.,  108. 
score,  «.,  231. 
sculan,  v.  pret.  pres.,  460. 
se,  sio  pert,  pr.  demon.,  257-260, 

265,  266,  293,  298. 
seche(n),  'to   seek,'   vw.,   127, 

382. 
see,   vs.,  335,   337,    391;     see, 

pret.,  336,  337;    seed,  pret., 

146. 
seek,  vw.,  127,  153,  362,  382. 
seethe,  vw.  vs.,  319,  321,  350, 

35 '.  392;  pret.,  selled,  384. 
seistow,  '  sayest   thou,'  v.-plu\, 

402. 
self,  a.,  256,  283-286. 
sell,  vw.,  202,  304,  382;   selled, 

pret.,  384. 
send,  7W.,  365,  366. 
seraph,  seraphim,  n.,  239,  240. 
series,  ;/.,  237. 

set,  vw.,  336,  367,  368,  370,  375. 
sew,  pret.,  347. 
shake,   vs.,  340,  392;    shaked, 

pret.,  354;    shook,  //.,  341, 

395.  477- 
shall,  v.   pret.   pres.,  423,  432, 

433,460;  shule(n),shulle(n), 

//.,  423,  460. 


shamrock,  «.,  39. 

shape,  vw{vs).,  343,  344,  307; 

shapen,  />/>.,  344,  397. 
shar(e),/;v/.,  332,  430. 
shave,  vw(vs).,  343,  344,  397; 

shaven,  pp.,  344,  397. 
she,  pr.  pers.,  164,  266,  270. 
shear,   vs.   vw.,   332,  333,  350, 

351>39i,43°;  shar(e), pret., 

332>  43°;   shore.  pret.,  332, 

333- 

shed,  vcu(vs).,  347,  370. 
sheep,     n.,     146,     152,     230; 

sheeps,  pi.,  146,  152. 
shete(n),  'to  shoot,'  vs.,  321. 
shew,/™?.,  353,  355. 
shine,  vs.,   155,  313,  315,  316, 

35°.  354,  394;  shined, pret., 

J55,  3r5>   3l6>   3545  shinen, 

pp.,  316,  394. 
ship,  n.,  211,  212,  227. 
-ship,  suf.,  108. 
shoe,  vw.,  379. 
shoon,  n.  pi,  130,  148,  224. 
shoot,  vs.,  319,  321,  380,  391; 

shotten,  //>.,  381,  391. 
shove,  vw(vs).,  322. 
show,  vw.,  352,  353,  355,  397; 

shew,/;v/.,  353,355;  shown, 

//■,  353- 
shred,  vw.,  373. 
shriek,  mo.,  384;    shright,  />/., 

384- 
shrink,     vs.,     324,     424,    426; 

shrunken,//.,  330,  390. 
shrive,  vs.    vw.,  313,  315,  316, 

35°>  39 1  • 
shul(len),/;r.f.  />/.,  423,  460. 
shut,  vw.,  370. 
sich,  /;'.  demon.,  262. 
sigh,  vw{vs).,  318. 
sin,  pr.,  276. 
sindon,  said,  pres.  pi.,  46,  469, 

470. 


Index  to   Words  and  Phrases. 


501 


sing,  vs.,  304,  324,  390,  391, 
404,  405,  406,  418,  419,  420, 
421,  422,  423,  424,  426,  427, 
429,  440;    sungen,  //.,  390, 

39i- 
sink,   vs.,  325,  424,  426,  429; 

sunken,//.,  330,  390. 
sister,  «.,   149,    152,   220,   235; 

sistren  or  sustren,  n.  pi.,  149, 

.  235- 
sit,   vs.,    107,   335,   336,    394; 

sat(e),  pp.,  337;    sitten,  sit, 

PP-,  337-  394;  sit,  'sits,' 415. 

situate,  pp.,  401. 

slay,  vs.,  340,  392;  sloh,  slow, 
pre/.,  341. 

sleep,  vw(vs).,  203,  347,  380. 

slide,  vs.,  313,  314,  392;  slod, 
pre/.,  314. 

sling,  vs.,  325,  427. 

slink,  vs.,  325,  424. 

slip,  vw(vs).,  318. 

slit,  vw(vs).,  318,  372,  373. 

slod,  pret.,  314. 

smart,  vw(ys).,  331. 

smite,  vs.,  310,  313,  314,  391, 
393;  smit, pret.,  314;  smited, 
pret.,  310;   smit,//.,  393. 

sneak,  vw(vs~).,  318. 

snow,  vs.  ?  352. 

soche,  pr.  demon.,  262. 

sod,  sodden,  pret.  and  pp.,  319, 

351- 
solstice,  7i.,  no. 

sovereignest,  v.  superl.,  251. 

sow,  vw(vs).,   347,   397;    sew, 

pret.,  347;  sown,//.,  347. 
span,  vw(vs).,   347. 
speak,  vs.,  335,  393,  429,  431 ; 

spake,  pret.,   335,  336,431; 

spoke,//.,  337,  429. 
species,  n.,  237. 
speed,  vw.,  376,  378;   speeded, 

pret.,  378. 


spell,  vw.,  364. 

spend,  z'w.,  366. 

spew,  vw(vs).,  318. 

spin,  vs.,  325,  426;   span,/;v/., 

429;    spinned./Tv/.,  352. 
spit,  wa/.  w.,  338,  351,  370,  372; 

spitted,  pret.,  372. 
split,  vw.,  372,  373. 
spoil,  vw.,  364. 

spread,  vw.,  367,  368,  370,  375. 
spring,  vs.,  325,  423,  425,  426, 

429. 
sprout,  vtv{vs).,  322. 
j  spurn,  vw(vs).,  331. 
squeeze,     vw.,     355;      squoze, 

/«*»  355- 

-st,  end.,  405.     See  (<?)st. 

staff,  71.,  340. 

stal(e),/;^/.,  332,  431. 

stamen,  n.,  238. 

stamina,  «.  //.,  238,  239. 

5/<7;;.,  n.,  95,  210,  213,  215,  216, 
217,  220,  226. 

stand,  vs.,  308,  340,  341,  394, 
477;  stood,//., 341, 394,  395, 
477;  stonden,  //.,  341,  394, 
395,477;  stant, 'stands,' 415. 

starve,  vw(vs).,  331;    starven, 

PP-,  331- 
stave,  71.,  340. 

stave,  vs.  vw.,  340,  341,  351. 
stead,  vw.,  371. 
steal,   7/5.,    332,  333,  390,  393, 

429,    431;    stale,  pret.,  332, 

431;   stole,//.,  333,429- 
steke(n),  'to  pierce,'  vs.,  327, 

328. 
step,  vw{ys).,  343. 
stick,      vw{vs).,      327,      351; 

stiked,  pret.  and  //.,  327. 
sting,  vs.,  325,  427. 
stink,  vs.,  325,  425. 
stol,  n.,  95. 
stonde(n),//.,  341,  394,  395. 


502 


Index  to    Words  and  Phrases. 


stone,  n.,  210,  216,   217,  226, 

227,  231. 
strath,  n.,  39. 
straught,  //.,  384. 
street,  it.,  20. 
strenger,   a.   comp.,    151,    248- 

250. 
stretch,  vw.,  383,  384;  straught, 

PP;  384-    ' 
strew,  vw.,  353,  397. 
strewn,  pp.,  353. 
strican,  '  to  advance,'  vs.,  315. 
stricken,//.,  314,  315,  391. 
stride,  vs.,  313,  314,  393;   strid, 

pret.,  314;   strid,//.,  393. 
strike,    vs.,    314,    391 ;     strok, 

pret.,     314;      striken,    pret., 

314- 

string,  «.,  328. 

string,  vs.,  327,  328,  351. 

strive,   vs.  vw.,  316,  317,  318, 

35'- 354- 
strong,  a.,  1 51,  248-250 ;  comp. 

strenger. 
strucken,  //.,  314. 
sty,  vzo{vs).,  318. 
sub-,  pre/.,  113. 
such,/;-,  demon.,  262,  292. 
suck,  wa/(z>.r).,  322. 
sulche,  /r.  demon.,  262. 
sungen,  //.,  391. 
sunken,  //.,  330,  390. 
sun-stead,  //.,  1 10. 
su]),  vw(vs).,  322. 
super-,  pre/.,  113. 
supreme,  a.,  252. 
sustren,  n.  pi.     See  sister. 
swang,  //v/.,  424,  429. 
swear,  vs.,  340,  342,   390,  392, 

431;       sware,     pret.,      342, 

43'- 
sweat,  Trio.,  373,  398;   sweaten, 

/A>  398,  399-  * 
sweep,  vw.,  380. 


swell,  vw(vs).,  330,  331,  397. 
swerve,  vw{ys~).,  331. 

swiche,    swilche,    /r.    demon., 

262. 
swim,     z/j.,     325,     425,     426; 

swimmed, pret.,  352. 
swine,  ;;.,  ill,  230. 
swing,  vs.,  325,  424,  427. 
swang,  pret.,  424,  429. 
swollen,//.,  331,397. 
swoop,  vw(vs).,  347. 
swulche,  pr.  demon.,  262. 

-t,  pp.  end.,  356,  3S7,  400. 
take,   vs.,  340,  343,  392;    took, 

AA>  341.  395- 
-t(e),/;v/.  end.,  153,  356,  361, 

362,  363-367.  375- 
teach,  vu>„  155,  383;    teached, 

pret.,  155,  385. 
tear,   vs.,  202,  332,  391,  431; 

tare,//-,?/.,  332,431. 
tell,  vw.,  46,  94,  153,  155,  382, 

411 ;   telled,  pret.,  155. 
-th,  end.,  403.     See  (J)th. 
than,  prep.  ?,  298. 
than  whom,  phr.,  298. 
thank,  vw.,  361,  363. 
thar,  '  need,'  v.  pret.  pres.,  463; 

thruste,  pret.,  463. 
that,  pr.  demon.,  257-260. 
that,  art.,  259. 
that  mm  —  that  other,  260. 
that,  pr.  re/.,  294-299;    that  — 

he,    'who,'    298;     that  —  his 

'whose,'     29S;      that  —  him, 

'whom,'    298;     that  —  hem, 

'  whom,'  '  which,'  298. 
the,  adv.,  258,  259. 
the,  art.,    105,   166,  259,   260; 

the  own,  166,  167;  thetone  — 

the  tother,  260. 
thee,  /;-.  pers.,  164,  270,  273, 

287-289. 


Index  to    Words  and  Phrases. 


503 


thee  self,  pr.  reflex.,  284. 
their,  pr.  pers.,   150,   266,  270, 

279,  280,  282. 
their'n,  pr.  pers.,  280. 
theirselves,     theirself,    pr.     re- 

flex,  285. 
them,  pr.  pers.,   150,  266,  267, 

270,  273. 
then,  art.,  259. 
thereof,  adv.,  166. 
these,/;-,  demon.,  261. 
they,  pr.pers.,  98,  150,  266,  270. 
thilke,  /;-.  demon.,  262. 
thin(e),  thi,  /;-.  pers.,  269,  275, 

277,  278,  280. 
thing,  n.,    150,    152,  224,   225, 

230. 
think,  vw.,  304,  383. 
thinkestow,  v.-phr.,  402. 
thinks,  in  methinks,  vw.  imper., 

383- 
this,/;-,  demon.,  261,  262. 
tho,  '  those,'  /;-.  demon.,  258. 
-thorp,  sic/.,  45. 
those,/;-,  demon.,  258. 
thou,  pr.  pers.,   164,  270,  272, 

287-289. 
thresh,  vw(vs').,  331. 
thrive,  vs.  via.,    146,  202,  316, 

317,  318,  351,  354. 
throssen,  //.,  398. 
throw,  vs.,  345,  392;    throvved, 

pret.,  352. 
thrust,  vw.,  371,  398;   thrusten, 

throssen,  //.,  398. 
thruste,  pret.,  463. 
-thwaite,  snf.,  45. 
thy, pr.  pers.     See  thine. 
tide,  vw.,  376. 
til,  prep.,  119. 
to,    prep.,     119;     with     infiu., 

443-447- 
toe,  «.,  148,  152. 
-toft,  suf.,  45. 


ton,  n.  pi.,  148,  152,  224. 

t'one,  the,  phr.,  260. 

tongue,  «.,  2ii,  212,  213,  214, 

227. 
tooth,  n.,  200,  232,  233. 
-torp,  suf.,  45. 
t'other,  the,  phr.,  260. 
trad(e),/^/.,  335,  431. 
trans-,  pre/.,  113. 

*>*i  n-»  39- 

tread,  vs.,  335,  393,  431 ;  trad, 
Pre*->  335>  431;  tread, /rf/., 
381;    trod,//.,  337,  393,  429. 

tu,  num.,  265. 

tun,  «.,    231. 

tunge,  n.,  211,  212,  213,  214. 

/aw,  num.,  265. 

twelvemonth,  ;?.,  200. 

twit,  w(ra).,  318,319. 

Sarf,  v.  pret.  pres.,  463. 

p>e,  pr.   demon.   <z;/</  rel.,   257, 

293>  294. 
/^«,  feeos,  pis,  pr.  demon.,  261. 
p>ii,  pr.  pers.,  263. 

ultra-,  pre/.,  113. 
uncouth,  «.,  201,  458. 
understand,    vs.,    308;     under- 
stood,//., 477. 
undertook,//.,  341. 
-ung,  suf.,  108,  447. 
unwittingly,  adv.,  456. 
\>&,  pr.  pers.,  97,  164,  270,  273. 
us  self,  pr.  reflex.,  284. 
titan,  inf.,  441. 

veal,  71.,  III. 

vers,  'verses,'  n.  pi.,  231. 

virtuoso,  «.,  238. 

virtuosest,  a.  superl.,  251. 

vixen,  «.,  127. 

vortex,  «.,  238. 

vox,  71.,  127. 


504 


Index  to    Words  and  Phrases. 


wade,  vw(vs) .,  343. 

wake,  vs.   vw.,  340,  343,   350, 

354.    394;     woke,  pp.,   341; 

waken,  pp.,  341,  394. 
walk,  vw{ys).,  347. 
wan,  pret.,  429. 
ware,  pret.,  334,  431. 
warp,  vw{vs").,  331. 
was,  pret.,  202,  472;   were,  2d 

per.   sing.,    202,    472,    473; 

wert,    2d  per.    sing.,    473; 

wast,    2d  per.    sing.,    473; 

were,  pi.,  472 ;    was,  pi.,  475 ; 

you  'was,  475,  476. 
was   given    a    book,  phr.,  451  ; 

was  told  the  truth,  phr.,  451. 
wash,    vw(ys).,    343;    washen, 

PP-,  344- 
wave,  pret.,  335,  431. 
wax,vw(vs).,  343,  344;  waxen, 

/>/>.,  344,  397. 
we,  pr.  pers.,  164,  263. 
wear,  vs{vw).,  334,  351,  431; 

werede,    pret.,    334;     ware, 

/>-<''■,  334,  43 1- 
weave,  z/j.  vw.,  335,  338,  350, 

354-   392»  431;     waf,    wave, 

/>'^-,   335.  431;    wove>  PP-> 

337.  392- 
wed,  vw.,  374. 

weep,  vw(vs).,  347,  380,  381. 
weet,  v.  pret.  pres.,  455. 
weigh,  vw(vs).,  339. 
wend,   »z«.,    366,   468;     went, 

/Vv/.,     366,     468;      wended, 

pret.,  366,  468. 
weorftan,  vs.,  170,  449,  450. 
were,  /;•<.■/.  .?</  /ev.  «»£■.,  202, 

472,  473- 
were(  n),  '  wear,'  z/rc,  334. 

(«,  vs.,  170,  338,  449,  450, 

472,  474. 
wet,  vw.,  360,  373. 
what,/;-,  interrog.,  289,  290. 


wheeze,  zw(ot).,  347. 

whet,  zw.,  373. 

whether,    pr.     interrog.,     292; 

<7</7\  interrog.,  292. 
which,/;-,  interrog.,  291,  292. 
which,  />;-.  rf/.,  294,  295,   297, 

298,  299;    the   which,    294; 

which  that,  295. 
whilk,  pr.  rel.,  291. 
whilom,  adv.,  221. 
whiskey,  n.,  39. 
who,   pr.    interrog.,    164,    165, 

264,  289,  291. 
who,  pr.  rel.,  295-298. 
who,  pr.    indef.,  299;    as  who 

should  say,  phr.,  299. 
whom,  pr.  interrog.,  164,  165, 

290,  291. 
whom,  pr.  rel.,  295-298;    than 

whom,  298. 
whose,/;',  interrog.,  290. 
whose,  pr.  rel.,  295-29S;    the 

whose,  295. 
whulc,  pr.   interrog.   and    rel., 

291. 
why,  adv.,  293. 

wich,  pr.  interrog.  and  rel.,  291. 
will,  v.,  432,  433,  464,  465. 
willan,  v.,  464. 
willy,  nilly,  phr.,  465. 
win,  vs.,  324,  427,  429;    wan, 

pret.,  429. 
wind,  vs.,  324,  326,   329,   330, 

427. 
wind,  vw.  vs.,  329,  330. 
wis,  I,  phr.,  457. 
wisse,  wis,  '  to  show,'  VW.,  457- 
'  wist, pret.,  454-456;  pp.,  456. 
wit,    v.    pret.    pres.,    454-457. 

See  wot  and  wist, 
witan,  v.  pret.  pres.,  454,  456. 
witan,  vs.,  319. 
with-,  pre/.,  1 08. 
withdraw,  withhold,  vs.,  108. 


Index  to    Words  and  Phrases. 


505 


wilhsay,  vw.,  108. 

withstand,  vs.,  108,  308. 

witting,  p.  pres.,  456. 

wol,  '  will,'  v.,  465. 

won,  'to  dwell,'  vw.,  357,  358, 

374- 
wonnot,  wonot,  won't,  v.  neg., 

465- 
wont,  vw.,  373,  374. 
work,  vw.,  383,  385;    worked, 

pret. ,    385;    wrought,   pret., 

385- 
worse,  adj.  comp.,  253;   worser, 

253- 

worthe(n),  vs.,  170,  449,  450. 

wot,  pres.  tense,  454-456; 
wotted,  pret.,  455,  456;  wot- 
ting,/./^., 455,  456. 

wound,  n.,  210,  227. 

wrang,  pret.,  424. 

wreak,  vw{vs).,  339. 

wreathe,  vw.,  318,  319;  wreath- 
en,//.,  319. 

wring,  vs.,  324,  424,  427; 
wrang,  pret.,  424. 

write,  vs.,  314,  390,  392,  423, 
425,  426,  427;  writ,  pret.. 
314,423,425,425-427;  writ, 
pp.,  392;    wrote,//.,  395. 

writhe,  vw(vs).,  318,  319; 
writhen,  //.,  319. 

wrought,  pret.,  383,  385. 

wuch,  wulch,  pr.  interrog.  and 
rel.,  291. 

wnnd,  n.,  210,  219. 

wunian,  vw.,  357. 

y->pref.,  387-39I.  456>  457- 


-y,  5«/,  108,  204. 

y-be,  '  been,'  pp.,  38S,  474. 

y-clept,  'called,'//.,  389. 

y-do, '  done,'  //.,  388. 

ye,/r.,  164,  165,  271,272,  273, 

287-289. 
y',  ye,  '  the,'  35. 
yead,  yeed,  v.     See  _jv</<-. 
year,    «.,    150,    152,    224,    225, 

230. 
yede,    pret.,.  467,    468;     yede, 

inf.,  467,  468. 
yell,  vwiz's).,  330. 
yelp,  vw(vs).,  330. 
yenger,  yengest,  c?.,  comp.  and 

super/.,  248,  249,  250. 
y-go,  '  gone,'  //.,  388. 
yield,  vzv(vs).,  330,  331 ;    yold- 

en, //.,  331. 
y-maked,  //.,  388. 
y-may,  inf.,  389. 
yode,  pret.,  467,  468. 
yoke,  11.,  230. 
yolden,//.,  331. 
yon,  /r.  demon.,  263. 
you,  /;-.  ^r5.,   164,   165,  271- 

273,  287-289. 
young,  a.,  248,  249,  250;  comp., 

yenger,  248. 
your,  yours,/;',  pers.,  276,  278, 

279,  280. 
your'n,  pr.  pers.,  280. 
yourself,  pr.   reflex.,   284,   285, 

286. 
you  self,  pr.  reflex.,  284. 
y-pointing,  /.  pres .,  389. 
y',  yat,  '  that,'/;',  and  conj.,  35. 
ywis,  adv.,  456,  457. 


lEnolisb  iReaoiiujs  tor  Stuoents. 

This  collection  is  planned  to  supply  English  master- 
pieces in  editions  at  once  competently  edited  and  inex- 
pensive. The  aim  will  be  to  fill  vacancies  now  existing 
because  of  subject,  treatment,  or  price.  The  volumes 
will  be  of  convenient  size  and  serviceably  bound. 

Coleridge  :  Prose  Extracts. 

Selections  chosen  and  edited  with  introduction  and  notes  by  Henry 
A.  Beers,  Professor  in  Yale  College.     About  150  pp. 

The  selections,  varying  in  length  from  a  paragraph  to 
ten  or  twenty  pages,  will  be  mainly  from  Tabic  Talk  and 
Biographia  Lite/aria,  but  also  in  part  from  The  Trie/hi, 
Notes  on  Shakesperc,  and  other  writings.  They  have 
been  chosen,  so  far  as  may  be,  to  illustrate  the  range  and 
variety  of  Coleridge's  thought,  and,  to  emphasize  this 
purpose,  have  been  grouped  by  subjects.  The  introduc- 
tion briefly  summarizes  the  author's  intellectual  position 
and  influence. 

De  Quincey :  Joan  of  Arc  and  The  English  Mail 
Coach. 

Edited  with  an  introduction  and  notes  by  James  Morgan  Hart, 
Prqfessor  in  Cornell  University,     xxvi  +  138  pp.     i6mo.     Boards. 

These  essays  have  been  chosen  as  fairly  representative 
of  the  two  most  notable  phases  of  the  author's  work,  and 
as  at  the  same  time  attractive  to  the  novice  in  literary 
study.  The  introduction  sketches  the  leading  facts  of 
De  Quincey's  life,  and  indicates  some  of  the  prominent 

1 


English  Tradings  for  Sudents. 


features  of  his  style.  Allusions  and  other  points  of  un- 
usual difficulty  are  explained  in  the  notes.  This  volume 
and  the  one  containing  the  Essays  on  BosweWs  Johnsoti 
(see  below)  are  used  at  Cornell  University  as  foundation 
for  elementary  rhetorical  study. 

Dryden  :  Select  Plays. 

Edited  with  a  brief  introduction  and  notes  by  James  W.  Bright 
Assistant  Professor  in  the  Johns  Hopkins  University.  About  roc 
pp.     j2nio.     [In  preparation.] 

Aside  from  their  representing  the  principal  literary  ac- 
tivity, in  point  of  quantity,  of  one  of  the  foremost  English 
writers,  Dryden's  plays  have  a  peculiar  interest  in  having 
been  among  the  first  to  be  played  upon  the  reopening  of 
the  theatres  under  Charles  II. 

Goldsmith  :  Present  State  of  Polite  Learning. 

Edited  with  introduction  and  notes  by  J.  M.  Hart,   Professor  in 
Cornell  University.     About  100  pp.     i6mo.     [In preparation.] 

There  are  many  reasons,  some  of  them  obvious,  for 
giving  this  essay  a  place  in  the  English  Readings  scries. 
One  that  may  be  mentioned  is  the  remarkably  clear 
insight  it  affords  into  the  entire  eighteenth-century  way 
of  criticising.  The  introduction  and  notes  will  direct 
the  student's  attention  along  this  line  of  observation. 

Lyly  :  Endimion. 

With  intro  luction  and  notes  by  George  P.  Baker,  Instructor  in 
ll.ii  vard  Colli 

Lyly's  plays  really  show  him  to  a  better  advantage  than 
does   the  Fuphucs,   by  which    he    is   chiefly    remembered 
and   his   place   in    English  dramatic  history  makes  it  de- 
sirable that  (die  at  least  should  be  easily  accessible. 


English  Tradings  for  Students. 


Macaulay  and  Carlyle  :  Croker's  Boswell's  John- 
son. 

The  complete  essays,  with  brief  notes  and  an  introduction  by  James 
Morgan  Hart,  Professor  in  Cornell  University.  A  preliminary 
edition.,  without  notes,  is  now  supplied.     93  pp.     i2mo.     Boards. 

These  parallel  treatments  of  Croker's  editing,  and  of 
the  characters  of  Boswell  and  Dr.  Johnson,  afford  an 
unusual  opportunity  for  comparative  study.  The  two 
essays  present  a  constant  contrast  in  intellectual  and 
moral  methods  of  criticism  which  cannot  fail  to  turn  the 
attention  of  students  to  important  principles  of  biographi- 
cal writing,  while  equally  important  principles  of  diction 
are  impressively  illustrated  in  the  two  strongly  marked 
styles.  The  essays  also  offer  an  excellent  introduction 
to  the  study  of  the  literary  history  of  Johnson's  times. 

Marlowe  :  Edward  II.     With  the  best  passages  from 
Tamburlaine  the  Great,  and  from  his  Poems. 

With  brief  notes  and  an  introductory  essay  by  Edward  T.  Mc- 
Laughlin, Professor  in  Yale  College.     [In  press.] 

Aside  from  the  intrinsic  value  of  Edward  II.,  as  Mar- 
lowe's most  important  work,  the  play  is  of  great  interest 
in  connection  with  Shakespere.  The  earlier  chronicle 
drama  was  in  Shakespere's  memory  as  he  was  writing 
Richard  II,  as  various  passages  prove,  and  a  comparison 
of  the  two  plays  (sketched  in  the  introduction)  affords 
basis  for  a  study  in  the  development  of  the  Elizabethan 
drama.  Since  Tamburlaine  has  really  no  plot  and 
character-development,  extracts  that  illustrate  its  poeti- 
cal quality  lose  nothing  for  lack  of  a  context.  The 
unobjectionable  beginning  of  Hero  and  Leander  is  per- 
haps the  finest  narrative  verse  of  the  sixteenth  century. 


English  Readings  for  Students. 


Specimens  of  Argumentation.     I.  Classic. 

Chosen  and  edited  by  George  P.  Raker,  Instructor  in  English 
in  Harvard  College,  and  Non-resident  Lecturer  on  Argumentative 
Composition  in  Wellesley  College.   [In  preparation.} 

Specimens  of  Argumentation.     II.  Modern. 

Chosen  and  edited  by  George  P.  Baker.  i6mo.  186  pp. 
Boards. 

This  compilation  includes  Lord  Chatham's  speech  on 
the  withdrawal  of  troops  from  Boston,  Lord  Mansfield's 
argument  in  the  Evans  case,  the  first  letter  of  Junius, 
the  first  of  Huxley's  American  addresses  on  evolution, 
Erskine's  defence  of  Lord  George  Gordon,  and  an  ad- 
dress of  Beecher's  in  Liverpool  during  the  cotton  riots. 
The  choice  and  editing  has  been  controlled  by  the  needs 
of  the  courses  in  "  Forensics"  in  Harvard  College.  The 
earlier  selections  offer  excellent  material  for  practice  in 
drawing  briefs,  a  type  of  such  a  brief  being  given  in  the 
volume.  The  notes  aim  to  point  out  the  conditions 
under  which  each  argument  was  made,  the  difficulties  to 
be  overcome,  and  wherein  the  power  of  the  argument 
lies.  It  is  thought  that  the  collection,  as  a  whole,  will 
be  found  to  contain  available  illustrations  of  all  the  main 
principles  of  argumentation,  including  the  handling  of 
evidence,  persuasion,  and  scientific  exposition. 

11I.NRY   HOLT   &  CO.,   Publishers,    New   York. 


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12mo.     $1.75. 

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TEXT=BOOKS   ON   ENGLISH. 

PANCOAST'S  REPRESENTATIVE  ENGLISH  LITERATURE, 

from   Chaucer    tO  Tennyson.      Complete  selections,  with  historical 
and  critical  connections.     i2mo,  517  pp. 

TAINE'S  HISTORY   OF   ENGLISH    LITERATURE. 

Library  Edition,  2  vols. 

1  vol.,  large  i2tno,  1097  pp. 

The  same,  condensed  and  edited  by  John  Fiske.     Large  i2mo,  502  pp. 

TEN  BRINK'S  EARLY  ENGLISH  LITERATURE,     tamo.    Vol.  I. 

To  Wyclif .     Transl.  by  H.  M.  Kennedy.  409   pp.    Vol.    II.     Through 
the  Renaissance.      Transl.   by  Dr.  W.  C.  Robinson.     339  pp. 

MCLAUGHLIN'S    LITERARY   CRITICISM   FOR   STUDENTS. 

Selections  from  English  Essayists  (Philip  Sidney  to  Pater).      Edited 
with   introduction  and  notes.     i2mo,  256  pp. 

ENGLISH     READINGS     FOR     STUDENTS.     i6mo. 

Coleridge  :    Prose  Extracts.      Edited  by  Prof.  H.  A.  Beers,  of  Yale. 
Bds.  172  pp. 

De  Quincey  :    Joan   of  Arc ;    The    English    Mail   Coach. 

Edited    by    Prof.    J.    M.    Hart,    of   Cornell.      Bds.     164   pp. 
Lyly  :  Endymion.      Edited   by  Geo    P.   Baker,   of  Harvard. 

Macaulay  and  Carlyle  :   On  Croker's  Boswell's  Johnson. 

Complete  Essays.     121110.     Bds.     93  pp. 

Marlowe:      Edward     II.,     and    Selections  from  Tamburlaine  and  the 
Poems.     Edited    by  Prof.    Edward  T.  McLaughlin,  of  Yale. 

Specimens    of     Modern     Argumentation.      From   Chatham. 

Mansfield,  "  Junius,"  Huxley,   Erskine,  and  Beecher.     Edited  by  Geo. 
P.  Baker,  of  Harvard.     Bds.     197  pp. 

LOUNSBURY'S    HISTORY  OF   THE   ENGLISH  LANGUAGE. 

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BRIGHT'S  ANGLO=SAXON   READER.      In  prose  and  verse,  planned 
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203  pp. 

BAIN'S    HIGHER   ENGLISH  GRAMMAR.     ,6mo,  382  PP. 

%-*%" For  fir  ices   and  further  particulars   about   abore   and  other   books   on 
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EUROPEAN   HISTORY. 

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Volume  I.  From  17(J2  to  1814.     With  two  maps.    Second  Amer- 
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Volume  III.  From  1848  to  1878.     {With  General  Index.)    viii -f- 
572  pp.     8vo.     $2.50  per  volume. 

Duruy's  (Victor)  Middle  Ages.  Translated  from  the  twelfth  edi- 
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Professor  in  Yale  University.  With  13  colored  maps,  xv  +  588 
pp.     12mo.     $2. 

Duruy's  (Victor)  Modern  Times  (1453-1789).  Translated  from  the 
French  and  annotated  by  Edward  A.  Grosvenor,  Professor 
of  French  in  Amherst  College,  and  Professor  of  History  in 
Smith    College.  pp.     12mo.     With    six    colored    maps. 

Beady  soon. 

Symonds'  (J.  A.)  Renaissance  in  Italy.  7  vols.  8vo.  Bound  ''n 
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II.  The  Revival  of  Learning.     Part  III.  The  Fine  Arts.     Part 

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V.  The  Catholic  Reaction.     2  vols. 

Symonds' (J.  A.)  Short  History  of  the  Renaissance  in  Italy.  Taken 
by  Alfred  Pearson  from  the  larger  work.  335  pp.  With 
portrait.     12mo. 

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1830,  Svo,  $2.00.     Part  II  ,  1830-1835,  $3.50. 

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FRANCE. 

The    Ancient    Regime.      Translated    by   John    Durand.      Large 

l2mo.     $2.50. 
The  French  Revolution.     Translated  by  John  Durand.     3  vols. 

Large  L2mo.     $7.50. 
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Large  12mo.     $5.00. 

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5 


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